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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



"MY POINT OF VIEW" 

■Representative Selections 



FROM THE WORKS OF 

Prof. Henry Drummond 



BY 

WILLIAM SHEPARD 

7 



f< And here is Christ" 1 s solution: . . . * Take Life as I take 
it. Look at it from My Point of View. Interpret it upon 
my principles. Take my yoke and learn of me and you will 
find it easy .' " — Pax Vobiscum. 



[RvoTcoSe; 



PHILADELPHIA t,f3j ;A Q^y 

HENRY ALTEMUS 



1802 






Copyright 
By HENRY ALTEMUS 

1892 



ALTEMUS' BOOK BINDERY, 
PHILADELPHIA, 



INTRODUCTION. 



The compiler believes that this is 
not an ordinary book of the sort for- 
merly known as " Elegant Extracts." 
And the reason lies not with the com- 
piler, but with his subject. Professor 
Drummond's vivid, pregnant, and epi- 
grammatic method makes it easy to 
compile a cento that shall be out of 
the ordinary. In this author's works 
almost every sentence stands by itself 
and explains itself. The setting may 



INTRODUCTION. 



add stability to the jewel : it does not 
increase its lustre. 

In these days of unfaith and uncer- 
tainty Professor Drummond presents 
an almost unique spectacle — the spec- 
tacle of a man who has mastered all 
the latest theories of evolution and 
given in his adherence to the latest 
discoveries of science without allow- 
ing his faith to moult a feather. The 
reasons for the faith that is in him he 
has presented with great skill in his 
Natural Law in the Spiritual World. 
The compiler believes that the gist of 
his argument is summed up in the 
selections here made from that book. 



INTRODUCTION. 



Professor Drummond has also pub- 
lished a series of striking addresses 
upon matters of daily life and con- 
duct which have been freely drawn 
upon for maxims and reflections, and 
it is astonishing how little, if any, of 
their vitality is lost in the process of 
transplanting. 



MY POINT OF VIEW." 



abstinence. 

The expression " total abstinence" 
is a strictly biological formula. It im- 
plies the sudden destruction of a defi- 
nite portion of Environment by the 
total withdrawal of all the connecting- 
links. Obviously, of course, total ab- 
stinence ought thus to be allowed a 
much wider application than to cases 
of u intemperance. " It is the only 
decisive method of dealing with any 
sin of the flesh. The very nature of 
the relations makes it absolutely im- 

7 



8 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

perative that every victim of unlaw- 
ful appetite, in whatever direction, 
s^iall totally abstain. Hence Christ's 
apparently extreme and peremptory 
language defines the only possible, as 
well as the only charitable, expedient : 
"If thy right eye offend thee, pluck 
it out, and cast it from thee. And if 
thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, 
and cast it from thee." 

Natural Law : " Mortification.' ' 



Hfrfcitton* 

PEOPLE often tell boys that if they 
seek the kingdom of God, everything 
else is going to be subtracted from 
them. They tell them that they are 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 9 

going to become gloomy, miserable, 
and will lose everything that makes 
a boy's life worth living — that they 
will have to stop baseball and story- 
books, and become little old men, and 
spend all their time in going to meet- 
ings and in singing hymns. Now, 
that is not true. Christ never said 
anything like that. Christ says we 
are to "seek first the kingdom of 
God, ' ' and everything else worth hav- 
ing is to be added unto us. 

"MrstP 

Bfcjustment 

Nature is not more natural to my 
body than God is to my soul. Every 
animal and plant has its own Environ- 



IO MY POINT OF VIEW. 

ment. And the further one inquires 
into the relations of the one to the 
other, the more one sees the mar- 
vellous intricacy and beauty of the 
adjustments. These wonderful adap- 
tations of each organism to its sur- 
roundings — of the fish to the water, 
of the eagle to the air, of the insect 
to the forest-bed — and of each part of 
every organism — the fish's swim-blad- 
der, the eagle's eye, the insect's breath- 
ing-tubes — which the old argument 
from design brought home to us with 
such enthusiasm, inspire us still with 
a sense of the boundless resources and 
skill of Nature in perfecting her ar- 
rangements for each single life. Down 
to the last detail the world is made for 



MY POINT OK VIEW. II 

what is in it ; and by whatever process 
things are as they are, all organisms 
find in surrounding Nature the ample 
complement of themselves. Man, too, 
finds in his Environment provision for 
all capacities, scope for the exercise 
of every faculty, room for the indul- 
gence of each appetite, a just supply 
for every want. So the spiritual man 
at the apex of the pyramid of life finds 
in the vaster range of his Environment 
a provision as much higher, it is true, 
as he is higher, but as delicately ad- 
justed to his varying needs. And all 
this is supplied to him just as the 
lower organisms are ministered to by 
the lower environment, in the same 
simple ways, in the same ' constant 



12 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

sequence, as appropriately and as 
lavishly. 

Natural Law : " Environment." 

B&wlution* 

Why should Evolution stop with 
the Organic? It is surely obvi- 
ous that the complement of Evolu- 
tion is Advolution, and the inquiry, 
Whence has all this system of things 
come? is, after all, of minor import- 
ance compared with the question, 
Whither does all tend? 

Natural Law : " Classification." 

Bgnosticism* 

The Christian apologist never fur- 
ther jnisses the mark than when he 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 1 3 

refuses the testimony of the Agnostic 
to himself. When the Agnostic tells 
me he is blind and deaf, dumb, torpid 
and dead to the spiritual world, I must 
believe him. Jesus tells me that. 
Paul tells me that. Science tells me 
that. He knows nothing of this outer- 
most circle; and we are compelled to 
trust his sincerity as readily when he 
deplores it as if, being a man without 
an ear, he professed to know nothing 
of a musical world, or, being without 
taste, of a world of art. The nescience 
of the Agnostic philosophy is the 
proof from experience that to be car- 
nally minded is Death. 

Natural Law: "Death." 



14 MY POINT OF VIKW. 

Ulxns&QivinQ. 

Charity is only a little bit of Love, 
one of the innumerable avenues of 
Love, and there may even be, and 
there is, a great deal of charity with- 
out Love. It is a very easy thing to 
toss a copper to a beggar on the street; 
it is generally an easier thing than not 
to do it. Yet Love is just as often in 
the withholding. We purchase relief 
from the sympathetic feelings roused 
by the spectacle of misery, at the cop- 
per's cost. It is too cheap — too cheap 
for us, and often too dear for the beg- 
gar. If we really loved him we would 
either do more for him, or less. 

The Greatest Thing in the World, 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 1 5 

alternatives* 

It is the deliberate verdict of the 
Lord Jesus that it is better not to live 
than not to love. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 

Hnfmal /IDaru 

IT is perfectly astonishing, when 
one thinks of it, what Nature can do 
for the animal man — to see with what 
small capital, after all, a human be- 
ing can get through the world. I 
once saw an African buried. Accord- 
ing to the custom of his tribe, his 
entire earthly possessions — and he was 
an average commoner — were buried 
with him. Into the grave, after the 
body, was lowered the dead man's 



1 6 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

pipe, then a rough knife, then a mud 
bowl, and last his bow and arrows — 
the bowstring cut through the middle, 
a touching symbol that its work was 
done. This was all. Four items, as 
an auctioneer would say, were the 
whole belongings for half a century 
of this human being. No man knows 
what a man is till he has seen what a 
man can be without, and be withal a 
man. That is to say, no man knows 
how great man is till he has seen how 
small he has been once. 

Tropical Africa. 

areas. 

Suppose we deliberately made up 
our minds as to what things we were 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 1J 

henceforth to allow to become our 
life? Suppose we selected a given 
area of our Environment, and deter- 
mined once for all that our corre- 
spondences should go to that alone, 
fencing in this area all round with a 
morally impassable wall ? True, to 
others we should seem to live a poorer 
life ; they would see that our environ- 
ment was circumscribed, and call us 
narrow because it was narrow. But, 
well-chosen, this limited life would be 
really the fullest life ; it would be 
rich in the highest and worthiest, and 
poor in the smallest and basest, corre- 
spondences. 

Natural Law : " Mortification. " 



MY POINT OF VIKW. 



Bsceticism* 

It is well to remember that we are 
to give our bodies a living sacrifice — 
not a half-dead sacrifice, as some peo- 
ple seem to imagine. There is no 
virtue in emaciation. 

How to Learn How. 

Btbeists* 

Men tell us sometimes there is no 
such thing as an Atheist. There 
must be. There are some men to 
whom it is true that there is no God. 
They cannot see God because they 
have no eye. They have only an 
abortive organ atrophied by neglect. 

Natural Law : " Degeneration." 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 19 

Httftu&e. 

The problem of the Christian life 
finally is simplified to this : man has 
but to preserve the right attitude. To 
abide in Christ, to be in position — 
that is all. Much work is done on 
board a ship crossing the Atlantic. 
Yet none of it is spent on making the 
ship go. The sailor but harnesses his 
vessel to the wind. He puts his sail 
and rudder in position, and lo ! the 
miracle is wrought. So everywhere 
God creates, man utilizes. All the 
work of the world is merely a taking 
advantage of energies already there. 
God gives the wind and the water and 
the heat ; man but puts himself in the 



20 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

way of the wind, fixes his water- 
wheel in the way of the river, puts 
his piston in the way of the steam ; 
and so, holding himself in position 
before God's Spirit, all the energies 
of Omnipotence course within his 
soul. 

Natural Law : " Growth." 

Bttraction, 

Thk weight of a load depends upon 
the attraction of the earth. But sup- 
pose the attraction of the earth were 
removed ? A ton on some other planet, 
where the attraction of gravity is less, 
does not weigh half a ton. Now 
Christianity removes the attraction of 
the earth, and this is one way in which 
it diminishes men's burden. It makes 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 21 

them citizens of another world. What 
was a ton yesterday is not half a ton 
to-day. So without changing one's 
circumstances, merely by offering a 
wider horizon and a different stand- 
ard, it alters the whole aspect of the 
world. 

Pax Vobiscum. 

Bacftsltoers, 

It is well known that the recovery 
of the backslider is one of the hardest 
problems in spiritual work. To rein- 
vigorate an old organ seems more dif- 
ficult and hopeless than to develop a 
new one ; and the backslider's terrible 
lot is to have to retrace with enfeebled 
feet each step of the way along which 



22 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

he strayed ; to make up inch by inch 
the leeway he has lost, carrying with 
him a dead-weight of acquired reluct- 
ance, and scarce knowing whether 
to be stimulated or discouraged by the 
oppressive memory of the previous 
fall. 

Natural Law: "Degeneration." 

JBacftsliMna : ITts penalty 

The penalty of backsliding is not 
something unreal and vague, some 
unknown quantity which may be 
measured out to us disproportion- 
ately, or which, perchance, since God 
is good, we may altogether evade. 
The consequences are already marked 
within the structure of the soul. So 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 23 

to speak, they are physiological. The 
thing affected by our indifference or 
by our indulgence is not the book of 
final judgment, but the present fabric 
of the soul. 

Natural Law : " Paras itism." 

Barriers, 

In the dim but not inadequate yis- 
ion of the Spiritual World presented 
in the Word of God the first thing 
that strikes the eye is a great gulf 
fixed. The passage from the Natural 
World to the Spiritual World is her- 
metically sealed on the natural side. 
The door from the inorganic to the 
organic is shut ; no mineral can open 
it ; so the door from the natural to 



24 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

the spiritual is shut, and no man can 
open it. This world of natural men 
is staked off from the Spiritual World 
by barriers which have never yet been 
crossed from within. No organic 
change, no modification of environ- 
ment, no mental energy, no moral 
effort, no evolution of character, no 
progress of civilization, can endow 
any single human soul with the attri- 
bute of Spiritual Life. The Spiritual 
World is guarded from the world next 
in order beneath it by a law of Bio- 
genesis : Except a man be born again, 
. . . except a man be born of water 
and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the 
Kingdom of God. 

Natural Law : " Biogenesis." 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 25 

3Beaut£ of Gfoaracter* 

Under the right conditions it is as 
natural for character to become beau- 
tiful as for a flower ; and if on God's 
earth there is not some machinery for 
effecting it, the supreme gift to the 
world has been forgotten. This is 
simply what man was made for. 
With Browning: "I say that Man 
was made to grow, not stop." Or in 
the deeper words of an older Book : 
u Whom He did foreknow, He also 
did predestinate ... to be conformed 
to the Image of His Son." 

The Changed Life. 



26 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

Beauty of tbe Tttniverse* 

As a mere spectacle, the universe 
to-day discloses a beauty so transcend- 
ent that he who disciplines himself by 
scientific work finds it an overwhelm- 
ing reward simply to behold it. 

Natural Law : " Introduction. " 

Beauty /ifcoral anfc Spiritual* 

What is the essential difference be- 
tween the Christian and the not-a- 
Christian — between the spiritual beau- 
ty and the moral beauty ? It is the 
distinction between the Organic and 
the Inorganic. Moral beauty is the 
product of the natural man, spiritual 
beauty of the spiritual man. And 
these two, according to the law of 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 2J 

Biogenesis, are separated from one 
another by the deepest line known to 
Science. This Law is at once the 
foundation of Biology and of Spiritual 
Religion. And the whole fabric of 
Christianity falls into confusion if we 
attempt to ignore it. The Law of 
Biogenesis, in fact, is to be regarded 
as the equivalent in biology of the 
First Law of motion in physics : Every 
body continues in its state of rest, or of 
uniform motion in a straight line, ex- 
cept in so far as it is compelled by force 
to change that state. 

Natural Law : " Classification." 

Beginnings^ 

The creation of a new heart, the 
renewing of a right spirit, is an om- 



28 MY POINT OK VIEW. 

nipotent work of God. L,eave it to 
the Creator. 4 ' He which hath begun 
a good work in you will perfect it 
unto that day." 

The Changed Life. 

Being. 

What we are stretches past what 
we do, beyond what we possess. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 

belief in Gob, 

I say that man believes in a God 
who feels himself in the presence of a 
Power which is not himself, and is 
immeasurably above himself — a Power 
in the contemplation of which he is 
absorbed, in the knowledge of which 
he finds safety and happiness. 

Natural Law : "Death." 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 29 

TLfte BcsU 

Christ tries to make the best world 
by setting the best men loose upon 
the world to influence it and reflect 
Him upon it. 

What is a Christian ? 

Zhc 3Bible, 

The Bible is a product of religion, 
not a cause of it. The war literature 
of America, which culminated, I sup- 
pose, in the publication of President 
Grant's life, came out of the war; the 
war did not come out of the literature. 
And so in the distant past there flowed 
among the nations of heathendom a 
small, warm stream, like the Gulf 
Stream in the cold Atlantic — a small 



30 MY POINT OF VIKW. 

stream of religion ; and now and 
then, at intervals, men, carried along 
by this stream, uttered themselves in 
words. The historical books came 
out of facts ; the devotional books 
came out of experiences ; the letters 
came out of circumstances ; and the 
Gospels came out of all three. That 
is where the Bible came from. It 
came out of religion ; religion did not 
come out of the Bible. 

The Study of the Bible. 

Biogenesis* 

At the beginning of the natural 
life we find the L,aw that natural life 
can only come from pre-existing nat- 
ural life ; and at the beginning of the 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 3 1 

spiritual life we find that the spiritual 
life can only come from pre-existing 
spiritual life. But there are not two 
Laws ; there is One — Biogenesis. At 
one end the Law is dealing with mat- 
ter, at the other with spirit. The 
qualitative terms natural and spiritual 
make no difference. Biogenesis is 
the Law for all life and for all kinds 
of life, and the particular substance 
with which it is associated is as indif- 
ferent to Biogenesis as it is to Gravi- 
tation. Gravitation will act whether 
the substance be suns and stars, or 
grains of sand, or rain-drops. Bio- 
genesis, in like manner, will act wher- 
ever there is life. 

Natural Law : "Biogenesis." 



32 MY POINT OK VIEW. 

Mvth a /IIMracle* 

Peopling these worlds with the ap- 
propriate living forms is virtually mir- 
acle. Nor in one case is there less 
of mystery in the act than in the 
other. The second birth is scarcely 
less perplexing to the theologian than 
the first to the embryologist. 

Natural Law : " Biogenesis." 

Mvth an& IRew Mvth. 

Except a mineral be born ' 4 from 
above" — from the Kingdom just above 
it — it cannot enter the Kingdom just 
above it. And except a man be born 
' * from above, ' ' by the same law he 
cannot enter the Kingdom just above 
him. There being no passage from 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 33 

one Kingdom to another, whether 
from inorganic to organic or from or- 
ganic to spiritual, the intervention of 
Ivife is a scientific necessity if a stone 
or a plant or an animal or a man is to 
pass from a lower to a higher sphere. 
The plant stretches down to the dead 
world beneath it, touches its minerals 
and gases with its mystery of Iyife, 
and brings them up ennobled and 
transformed to the living sphere. The 
breath of God, blowing where it list- 
eth, touches with its mystery of Life 
the dead souls of men, bears them 
across the bridgeless gulf between the 
natural and the spiritual, between the 
spiritually inorganic and the spirit- 
ually organic, endows them with its 



34 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

own high qualities, and develops with- 
in them those new and sweet facul- 
ties by which those who are born 
again are said to see the Kingdom of 
God. 

Natural Law : " Biogenesis." 

38oofts : 1bow to Cboose Qhcm. 

Do not be distressed if you do not like 
time-honored books or classical works 
or recommended books. Choose for 
yourself; trust yourself; plant yourself 
on your own instincts ; that which is 
natural for us, that which nourishes us 
and gives us appetite, is that which 
is right for us. We have all different 
minds, and we are all at different 
stages of growth. Some other day we 
may find food in the recommended 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 35 

book, though we should possibly 
starve on it to-day. The mind de- 
velops and changes, and the favorites 
of this year, also, may one day cease 
to interest us. Nothing better, in- 
deed, can happen to us than to lose 
interest in a book we have often read ; 
for it means that it has done its work 
upon us, brought us up to its level, 
and taught us all it had to teach. 

On Books. 

3Boo&s: TTbeir jfrtenfcsbfp* 

To fall in love with a good book is 
one of the greatest events that can be- 
fall us. It is to have a new influence 
pouring itself into our life,, a new 
teacher to inspire and refine us, a new 
friend to be by our side always, who, 



36 MY POINT OF VIKW. 

when life grows narrow and weary, 
will take us into his wider and calmer 
and higher world. Whether it be 
biography, introducing us to some 
humble life made great by duty done ; 
or history, opening vistas into the 
movements and destinies of nations 
that have passed away ; or poetry, 
making music of all the common 
things around us, and filling the fields 
and the skies and the works of the city 
and the cottage with eternal meanings 
— whether it be these, or story-books, 
or religious books, or science, no one 
can become the friend even of one 
good book without being made wiser 
and better. 

On Books. 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 37 

The physical Laws may explain 
the inorganic world ; the biological 
Laws may account for the develop- 
ment of the organic. But of the 
point where they meet, of that strange 
borderland between the dead and the 
living, Science is silent. It is as if 
God had placed everything in earth 
and heaven in the hands of Nature, 
but reserved a point at the genesis of 
Life for His direct appearing. 

Natural Law : " Biogenesis." 

Bub&btsm* 

There is no analogy between the 
Christian religion and Buddhism or 
the Mohammedan religion. There is 



38 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

no true sense in which a man can say, 
"He that hath Buddha hath Life." 
Buddha has nothing to do with Life. 
He may have something to do with 
morality. He may stimulate, impress, 
teach, guide, but there is no distinct 
new thing added to the souls of those 
who profess Buddhism. These relig- 
ions may be developments of the nat- 
ural, mental, or moral man. But 
Christianity professes to be more. It 
is the mental or moral man plus some- 
thing else or some One else. It is the 
infusion into the Spiritual man of a 
New Life, of a quality unlike any- 
thing else in Nature. This consti- 
tutes the separate Kingdom of Christ, 
and gives to Christianity alone, of all 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 39 

the religions of mankind, the strange 
mark of Divinity. 

Natural Law : " Biogenesis." 

Calm* 

Christ's life outwardly was one of 
the most troubled lives that was ever 
lived : tempest and tumult, tumult 
and tempest, the waves breaking over 
it all the time till the worn body was 
laid in the grave. But the inner life 
was a sea of glass. The great calm 
was always there. At any moment 
you might have gone to Him and 
found Rest. 

Pax Vobiscum. 

Carelessness* 

W£ fail to appreciate the meaning 
of spiritual degeneration or detect the 



40 MY POINT OF VIKW. 

terrible nature of the consequences 
only because they evade the eye of 
sense. But could we investigate 
the spirit as a living organism, or 
study the soul of the backslider on 
principles of comparative anatomy, 
we should have a revelation of the 
organic effects of sin, even of the mere 
sin of carelessness as to growth and 
work, which must revolutionize our 
ideas of practical religion. There is 
no room for the doubt even that what 
goes on in the body does not with 
equal certainty take place in the spirit 
under the corresponding conditions. 

Natural Law : " Parasitism ." 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 41 

Cause anfc Effect. 

Things are so arranged in the orig- 
inal planning of the world that cer- 
tain effects must follow certain causes, 
and certain causes must be abolished 
before certain effects can be removed. 

Pax Vobiscum. 

The Christian life is not casual, 
but causal. All nature is a standing 
protest against the absurdity of ex- 
pecting to secure spiritual effects, or 
any effects, without the employment 
of appropriate causes. The Great 
Teacher dealt what ought to have 
been the final blow to this infinite 
irrelevancy by a single question: " Do 



42 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of 
thistles ?" 

Pax Vobiscum. 

Centres* 

Thk perfection of unity is attained 
where there is infinite variety of phe- 
nomena, infinite complexity of rela- 
tion, but great simplicity of Law. 
Science will be complete when all 
known phenomena can be arranged 
in one. vast circle in which a few well- 
known Laws shall form the radii, 
these radii at once separating and 
uniting— separating into particular 
groups, yet uniting all to a common 
centre. 

Natural Law : " Introduction." 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 43 

Cbance* 

Nothing that happens in the world 
happens by chance. God is a God of 
order. Everything is arranged upon 
definite principles, and never at ran- 
dom. 

Pax Vobiscum. 

Try to give up the idea that relig- 
ion comes to us by chance or by mys- 
tery or by caprice. It comes to us by 
natural law, or by supernatural law, 
for all law is Divine. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 

Change. 

Not more certain is it that it is 
something outside of the thermometer 



44 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

that produces a change in the ther- 
mometer, than it is something out- 
side the soul of man that produces a 
moral change upon him. 

The Changed Life. 

Will-power does not change men. 
Time does not change men. Christ 
does. Therefore u L,et that mind be 
in you which is also in Christ Jesus. ' ' 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 

Gbaracter, 

It is not said that the character will 
develop in all its fulness in this life. 
That were a time too short for an 
Evolution so magnificent. In this 
world only the cornless ear is seen ; 
sometimes only the small yet still pro- 
phetic blade. Natural Law. 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 45 

Of all unseen things, the most radi- 
ant, the most beautiful, the most di- 
vine, is character. 

The Changed Life. 

GbfG>*Spirft 

The New Testament is nowhere 
more impressive than where it insists 
on the fact of man's dependence. In 
its view the first step in religion is for 
man to feel his helplessness. Christ's 
first beatitude is to the poor in spirit. 
The condition of entrance into the 
spiritual kingdom is to possess the 
child-spirit — that state of mind com- 
bining at once the profoundest help- 
lessness with the most artless feeling 
of dependence. Substantially the 
same idea underlies the countless 



46 MY POINT OF VIKW. 

passages in which Christ affirms that 
He has not come to call the righteous, 
but sinners, to repentance. 

Natural Law : " Environment." 

Gbrist 

To become like Christ is the only 
thing in the world worth caring for, 
the thing before which every ambi- 
tion of man is folly, and all lower 
achievement vain. Those only who 
make this quest the supreme desire 
and passion of their lives can even 
begin to hope to reach it. 

The Changed Life. 

Cbrfst tbe Source of 3o£, 

Christ is the source of Joy to men 
in the sense in which He is the source 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 47 

of Rest. His people share His life, 
and therefore share its consequences, 
and one of these is Joy. His method 
of living is one that in the nature of 
things produces Joy. When He spoke 
of His Joy remaining with us He 
meant in part that the causes which 
produced it should continue to act. 
His followers, that is to say, by repeat- 
ing His life would experience its ac- 
companiments. His Joy, His kind of 
Joy, would remain with them. 

Pax Vobiscum. 

Cbrfst: Mbo anfc Wbere is 1be ? 

Thank God the Christianity of to- 
day is coming nearer the world's 
need ! Live to help that on. Thank 



48 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

God men know better, by a hair's- 
breadth, what religion is, what God 
is, who Christ is, where Christ is ! 
Who is Christ ? He who fed the hun- 
gry, clothed the naked, visited the 
sick. And where is Christ? Where? 
Whoso shall receive a little child in 
My name receiveth Me. And who are 
Christ's? Every one that loveth is 
born of God. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 

Cbrtst's ffnfluence* 

There is only one great character 
in the world^that can really draw out 
all that is best in men. He is so far 
above all others in influencing men 
for good that He stands alone. That 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 49 

man was the founder of Christianity. 
To be a Christian man is to have that 
character for our ideal in life, to live 
under its influence, to do what He 
would wish us to do, to live the kind 
of life He would have lived in our 
house, and had He our day's routine 
to go through. 

What is a Christian ? 

ChvisVs /IDanltness* 

You would be surprised when you 
come to know who Christ is, if you 
have not thought much about it, to 
find how He will fit in with all hu- 
man needs, and call out all that is 
best in man. The highest and man- 
liest character that ever lived was 

Christ. What is a Christian ? 

4 



50 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

Cbrtst's Secret 

( ' IvOVE is the fulfilling 6i the Law. ' ' 
It is the rule for fulfilling all rules, 
the new commandment for keeping 
all the old commandments, Christ's 
one secret of the Christian life. 

The Greatest Thing in the World, 

Cbrist's Serenity 

Nothing ever for a moment broke 
the serenity of Christ's life on earth. 
Misfortune could not reach Him ; He 
had no fortune. Food, raiment, 
money — fountain-heads of half the 
world's weariness — He simply did 
not care for ; they played no part in 
His life; He "took no thought" for 
them. It was impossible to affect 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 5 1 

Him by lowering His reputation. He 
had already made himself of no repu- 
tation. He was dumb before insult. 
When He was reviled He reviled not 
again. In fact, there was nothing 
that the world could do to Him that 
could ruffle the surface of His spirit. 

Pax Vobiscum. 

Spurious Christians* 

WE are, of course, not responsible 
for everything that is said in the 
name of Christianity ; but a man does 
not give up medicine because there 
are quack doctors, and no man has a 
right to give up his Christianity be- 
cause there are spurious or inconsist- 
ent Christians. 

How to Know How, 



52 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

xanlovel^ Christians, 

How many prodigals are kept out of 
the Kingdom of God by the unlovely 
character of those who profess to be 
inside ! 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 

Ube Urue Christian* 

When a man becomes a Christian 
the natural process is this : The liv- 
ing Christ enters into his soul. De- 
velopment begins. The quickening 
Iyife seizes upon the soul, assimilates 
surrounding elements, and begins to 
fashion it. According to the great 
Iyaw of Conformity to Type, this 
fashioning takes a specific form. It 
is that of the Artist who fashions. 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 53 

And all through Iyife this wonderful, 
mystical, glorious, yet perfectly def- 
inite process goes on ' ' until Christ be 
formed ' ' in it. 

Natural Law : " Conformity to Type." 

Cbristianits a Xeavem 

We are told in the New Testament 
that Christianity is leaven, and u leav- 
en" comes from the same root- word 
as lever, meaning that which raises up, 
which elevates ; and a Christian young 
man is a man who raises up or ele- 
vates the lives of those round about 
him. 

What is a Christian ? 

Classification* 

The difference between the Spirit- 
ual man and the Natural man is not 



54 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

a difference of development, but of 
generation. It is a distinction of 
quality, not of quantity. A man can- 
not rise by any natural development 
from " morality touched by emotion" 
to ( ' morality touched by Life. ' ' Were 
we to construct a scientific classifica- 
tion, Science would compel us to ar- 
range all Natural men, moral or im- 
moral, educated or vulgar, as one 
family. One might be high in the 
family group, another low ; yet, prac- 
tically, they are marked by the same 
set of characteristics — they eat, sleep, 
work, think, live, die. But the Spirit- 
ual man is removed from this family 
so utterly by the possession of an ad- 
ditional characteristic that a biologist, 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 55 

fully informed of the whole circum- 
stances, would not hesitate a moment 
to classify him elsewhere. And if he 
really entered into these circum- 
stances, it would not be in another 
family, but in another Kingdom. It 
is an old-fashioned theology which 
divides the world in this way — which 
speaks of men as Living and Dead, 
Lost and Saved — a stern theology all 
but fallen into disuse. This differ- 
ence between the Living and the Dead 
in souls is so unproved by casual ob- 
servation, so impalpable in itself, so 
startling as a doctrine, that schools 
of culture have ridiculed or denied 
the grim distinction. Nevertheless 
the grim distinction must be retained. 



56 MY POINT OF VIKW. 

It is a scientific distinction. "He 
that hath not the Son hath not Life." 

Natural Law : " Biogenesis." 

Content 

Do not quarrel, therefore, with your 
lot in life. Do not complain of its 
never-ceasing cares, its petty environ- 
ment, the vexations you have to stand, 
the small and sordid souls you have to 
live and work with. Above all, do not 
resent temptation; do not be perplexed 
because it seems to thicken round you 
more and more, and ceases neither 
for effort nor for agony nor prayer. 
That is your practice. That is the 
practice which God appoints you. 
And it is having its work in making 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 57 

you patient, and humble, and gener- 
ous, and unselfish, and kind, and 
courteous. 

The Greatest Thing in the World, 

XTbe Commonplace* 

Nothing in this age is more needed 
in every department of knowledge 
than the rejuvenescence of the com- 
monplace. In the spiritual world 
especially, he will be wise who courts 
acquaintance with the most ordinary 
and transparent facts of nature. 

Natural Law : " Environment." 

"Consider tbe XilB." 

Christ's words are not a general 
appeal to consider nature. Men are 
not to consider the lilies simply to 



58 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

admire their beauty, to dream over 
the delicate strength and grace of 
stem and leaf. The point they were 
to consider was how they grew — how 
without anxiety or care the flower 
woke into loveliness, how without 
weaving these leaves were woven, 
how without toiling these complex 
tissues spun themselves, and how 
without any effort or friction the 
whole slowly came ready-made from 
the loom of God in its more than 
Solomon-like glory. " So," He says, 
making the application beyond dis- 
pute, u you careworn, anxious men 
must grow. You, too, need take no 
thought for your life, what ye shall 
eat, or what ye shall drink, or what 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 59 

ye shall put on. For if God so clothe 
the grass of the field, which to-day is, 
and to-morrow is cast into the oven, 
shall He not much more clothe you, 
Oyeof little faith ?" 

Natural Law : " Growth." 

Consumption an& fits Spiritual 
Hualogue* 

The soul undergoing Degeneration, 
surely by some arrangement with 
Temptation planned in the uttermost 
hell, possesses the power of absolute 
secrecy. When all within is festering 
decay and rottenness, a Judas, with- 
out anomaly, may kiss hit Lord. 
This invisible consumption, like its 
fell analogue in the natural world, 



60 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

may even keep its victim beautiful 
while slowly slaying it. 

Natural Law : " Degeneration." 

Continuity 

Probably the most satisfactory way 
to secure for one's self a just appreci- 
ation of the principle of Continuity 
is to try to conceive the universe with- 
out it. The opposite of a continuous 
universe would be a discontinuous 
universe, an incoherent and irrelevant 
universe — as irrelevant in all its ways 
of doing things as an irrelevant per- 
son. In effect, to withdraw Contin- 
uity front the universe would be the 
same as to withdraw reason from an 
individual. The universe would run 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 6 1 

deranged ; the world would be a mad 
world. 

Natural Law : " Law of Continuity." 

Continuous Slaw* 

The Natural Laws are not the 
shadows or images of the Spiritual 
in the same sense as autumn is em- 
blematical of Decay, or the falling 
leaf of Death. The Natural Laws, 
as the Law of Continuity might well 
warn us, do not stop with the visible, 
and then give place to a new set of 
Laws bearing a strong similitude to 
them. The Laws of the invisible 
are the same Laws, projections of the 
natural, not supernatural. Analogous 
phenomena are not the fruit of parallel 



62 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

Laws, but of the same Laws — Laws 
which at one end, as it were, may be 
dealing with Matter, at the other end 
with Spirit. 

Natural Law : " Law of Continuity." 

Conversion is Suttoem 

The change from Death to Life, 
alike in the natural and spiritual 
spheres, is the work of a moment. 
Whatever the conscious hour of the 
second birth may be — in the case of 
an adult it is probably defined by the 
first real victory over sin — it is certain 
that on biological principles the real 
turning-point is literally a moment. 
But on moral and humane grounds 
this misunderstood, perverted, and 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 63 

therefore despised doctrine is equally 
capable of defence. Were any re- 
former, with an adequate knowledge 
of human life, to sit down and plan 
a scheme for the salvation of sinful 
men, he would probably come to the 
conclusion that the best way, after 
all — perhaps, indeed, the only way — 
to turn a sinner from the error of his 
ways would be to do it suddenly. 

Natural Law : " Death." 

Communion witb ©o&* 

Communion with God — can it be 
demonstrated in terms of Science that 
this is a correspondence which will 
never break? We do not appeal to 
Science for such a testimony. We 



64 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

have asked for its conception of an 
Eternal I,ife, and we have received 
for answer that Eternal Life would 
consist in a correspondence which 
should never cease, with an Environ- 
ment which should never pass away. 
And yet what would Science demand 
of a perfect correspondence that is 
not met by this, the knowing of God? 
There is no other correspondence 
which could satisfy one at least of the 
conditions. Not one could be named 
which would not bear on the face of 
it the mark and pledge of its mortal- 
ity. But this, to know God, stands 
alone. 

Natural Law : " Eternal Life." 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 65 

Completeness, 

The Christian life is the only life 
that will ever be completed. Apart 
from Christ the life of man is a broken 
pillar, the race of men an unfinished 
pyramid. One by one, in sight of 
Eternity, all human ideals fall short; 
one by one, before the open grave, all 
human hopes dissolve. 

Natural Law : " Conformity to Type." 

Conflict. 

Keep in the midst of Life. Do not 
isolate yourself. Be among men, and 
among things, and among troubles and 
difficulties and obstacles. You re- 
member Goethe's words: " Talent de- 



66 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

velops itself in solitude, character in 
the stream of life." 

The Greatest Thing in the World, 

Correspon&ence wftb Oob. 

Man's spiritual life consists in the 
number and fulness of his correspond- 
ences with God. In order to develop 
these he may be constrained to insu- 
late them, to enclose them from the 
other correspondences, to shut himself 
in with them. In many ways the 
limitation of the natural life is the 
necessary condition of the full enjoy- 
ment of the spiritual life. 

Natural Law : " Mortification.' ' 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 67 



Courtesy 

Politeness has been defined as 
love in trifles. Courtesy is said to 
be love in little things. And the 
one secret of politeness is to love. 
Love cannot behave itself unseemly. 
You can put the most untutored per- 
sons into the highest society, and if 
they have a reservoir of Love in their 
heart they will not behave themselves 
unseemly. They simply cannot do 
it ^ . 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 

Criticism, 

IT is easier to criticise the best 
thing superbly than to do the smallest 
thing indifferently. 

What is a Christian ? 



68 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

Cross* 

The whole cross is more easily 
carried than the half. 

Natural Law : " Mortification. " 

Beatb in mature* 

We are wont to imagine that Na- 
ture is full of Life. In reality it is 
full of Death. One cannot say it is 
natural for a plant to live. Examine 
its nature fully, and you have to ad- 
mit that its natural tendency is to die. 
It is kept from dying by a mere tem- 
porary endowment which gives it an 
ephemeral dominion over the elements 
— gives it power to utilize for a brief 
span the rain, the sunshine, and the 
air. Withdraw this temporary en- 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 69 

dowment for a moment and its true 
nature is revealed. Instead of over- 
coming Nature it is overcome. The 
very things which appeared to minis- 
ter to its growth and beauty now turn 
against it and make it decay and die. 
The sun which warmed it, withers it; 
the air and rain which nourished it, 
rot it. It is the very forces which we 
associate with life which, wh^n their 
true nature appears, are discovered to 
be really the ministers of death. 

Natural Law : " Degeneration.' ' 

H>eatb a Step in Evolution* 

The part of the organism which 
begins to get out of correspondence 
with the Organic Environment is the 



70 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

only part which is in vital correspond- 
ence with it. Though a fatal disad- 
vantage to the natural man to be 
thrown out of correspondence with 
this Environment, it is of inestimable 
importance to the spiritual man. For 
so long as it is maintained the way is 
barred for a further Evolution. And 
hence the condition necessary for the 
further Evolution is that the spiritual 
be released from the natural. That is 
to say, the condition of the further 
Evolution is Death. 

Natural Law : " Eternal Life." 

2>eformtt£* 

How pardonable, surely, the im- 
patience of deformity with itself, of a 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 7 1 

consciously despicable character stand- 
ing before Christ, wondering, yearn- 
ing, hungering, to be like that ! 

The Changed Life. 

H>eaeneratton, 

The punishment of degeneration is 
simply degeneration — the loss of func- 
tions, the decay of organs, the atrophy 
of the spiritual nature. 

Natural Law : " Parasitism." 

^Development 

The development of any organism 
in any direction is dependent on its 
environment. A living cell cut off 
from air will die. A seed-germ apart 
from moisture and an appropriate tem- 
perature will make the ground its 



72 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

grave for centuries. Human nature, 
likewise, is subject to similar condi- 
tions. It can only develop in pres- 
ence of its Environment. No matter 
what its possibilities may be, no mat- 
ter what seeds of thought or virtue, 
what germs of genius or of art, lie 
latent in its breast, until the appro- 
priate Environment present itself the 
correspondence is denied, the develop- 
ment discouraged, the most splendid 
possibilities of life remain unrealized, 
and thought and virtue, genius and 
art, are dead. 

Natural Law : " Death." 

Difficulties, 

Talking about difficulties, as a 
rule, only aggravates them. Entire 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 73 

satisfaction to the intellect is unattain- 
able about any of the greater prob- 
lems, and if you try to get to the 
bottom of them by argument, there 
is no bottom there ; and therefore 
you make the matter worse. 

How to Learn How. 

disease anfc H>eatb* 

In the natural world it only requires 
a single vital correspondence of the 
body to be out of order to ensure 
death. It is not necessary to have 
consumption, diabetes, and an aneur- 
ism to bring the body to the grave 
if it have heart disease. He who is 
fatally diseased in one organ neces- 
sarily pays the penalty with his life, 



74 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

though all the others be in perfect 
health. And such, likewise, are the 
mysterious unity and correlation of 
functions in the spiritual organism 
that the disease of one member may 
involve the ruin of the whole. 

Natural Law : " Mortification." 

2>ivinit2* 

Sanctity is in character, and not 
in moods; Divinity in our own plain, 
calm humanity, and in no mystic 
rapture of the soul. 

The Changed Life. 

2>cmbt to be HMtiefc, 

Do you sometimes feel yourself 
thinking unkind things about your 
fellow-students who have intellectual 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 75 

difficulty? I know how hard it is 
always to feel sympathy and toler- 
ation for them, but we must address 
ourselves to that most carefully and 
most religiously. If my brother is 
short-sighted, I must not abuse him 
or speak against him; I must pity 
him, and if possible try to improve 
his sight or to make things that he is 
to look at so bright that he cannot 
help seeing. But never let us think 
evil of men who do not see as we do. 
From the bottom of our hearts let us 
pity them, and let us take them by 
the hand and spend time and thought 
over them, and try to lead them to 
the true light. 

How to Learn How. 



j6 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

Doubt an& IHnbeliet 

Christ never failed to distinguish 
between doubt and unbelief. Doubt 
is canH believe ; unbelief is won't be- 
lieve. Doubt is honesty ; unbelief is 
obstinacy. Doubt is looking for 
light ; unbelief is content with dark- 
ness. 

How to Learn How. 

BwarfeD Souls* 

WE have already admitted that he 
who knows not God may not be a 
monster; we cannot say he will not 
be a dwarf. This precisely, and on 
perfectly natural principles, is what 
he must be. You can dwarf a soul 



MY POINT OF VIEW. J J 

just as you can dwarf a plant, by de- 
priving it of a full Environment. 

Natural Law: " Death." 

Mud- 
dying is that break-down in an 
organism which throws it out of cor- 
respondence with some necessary part 
of the environment. Death is the re- 
sult produced — the want of corre- 
spondence. We do not say that this 
is all that is involved. But this is the 
root-idea of Death — failure to adjust 
internal relations to external relations, 
failure to repair the broken inward 
connection sufficiently to enable it to 
correspond again with the old sur- 
roundings. 

Natural Law : " Death." 



78 MY POINT OF VIEW* 

Ube Bartblp /BMnb* 

This earthly mind may be of noble 
calibre, enriched by culture, high- 
toned, virtuous, and pure. But if it 
know not God ? . What though its 
correspondences reach to the stars of 
heaven or grasp the magnitudes of 
Time and Space ? The stars of heav- 
en are not heaven. Space is not God. 

Natural Law : " Death." 

JEasp* 

The well-defined spiritual life is 
not only the highest life, but it is 
also the most easily lived. 

Natural Law : " Mortification." 



MY POINT OK VIEW. 79 

Effort. 

A religion of effortless adoration 
may be a religion for an angel, but 
never for a man. Not in the contem- 
plative, but in the active, lies true 
hope ; not in rapture, but in reality, 
lies true life ; not in the realm of 
ideals, but among tangible things, is 
man's sanctification wrought. 

The Changed Life, 

Eloquence witbout 3Lo\>e* 

What a noble gift it is, the power 
of playing upon the souls and wills 
of men, and rousing them to lofty 
purposes and holy deeds ! Paul says, 
"If I speak with the tongues of men 



80 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

and of angels, and have not love, I 
am become as sounding brass, or a 
tinkling cymbal. ' ' And we all know- 
why. We have all felt the brazen- 
ness of words without emotion, the 
hollowness, the unaccountable unper- 
suasiveness, of eloquence behind 
which lies no I^ove. 

The Greatest Thing in the World, 

Environment 

Au, knowledge lies in Environ- 
ment. When I want to know about 
minerals I go to minerals. When I 
want to know about flowers I go to 
flowers. And they tell me. In their 
own way they speak to me, each in 
its own way, and each for itself — not 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 8 1 

the mineral for the flower, which is 
impassible, nor the flower for the 
mineral, which is also impossible. So 
if I want to know about Man, I go to 
his part of the Environment. And 
he tells me about himself ; not as the 
plant or the mineral, for he is neither, 
but in his own way. And if I want 
to know about God, I go to His part 
of the Environment. And He tells 
me about Himself, not as a Man, for 
He is not Man, but in His own way. 

Natural Law : " Eternal Life." 

Environment : fits f unction. 

The great function of Environment 
is not to modify, but to sustain. In 
sustaining life, it is true, it modifies. 



82 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

But the latter influence is incidental, 
the former essential. Our Environ- 
ment is that in which we live and 
move and have our being. Without 
it we should neither live nor move nor 
have any being. In the organism lies 
the principle of life ; in the Environ- 
ment are the conditions of life. With- 
out the fulfilment of these conditions, 
which are wholly supplied by Environ- 
ment, there can be no life. An organ- 
ism in itself is but a part ; Nature is 
its complement. Alone, cut off from 
its surroundings, it is not. Alone, cut 
off from my surroundings, I am not — 
physically I am not. I am only as I am 
sustained. I continue only as I receive. 
My Environment may modify me, but 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 83 

it has first to keep me. And all the time 
its secret transforming power is indirect- 
ly moulding body and mind it is directly 
moving in the more open task of min- 
istering to my myriad wants, and from 
hour to hour sustaining life itself. 

Natural Law : " Environment." 

Whenever you attempt a good 
work you will find other men doing 
the same kind of work, and probably 
doing it better. Envy them not. 
Envy is a feeling of ill-will to those 
who are in the same line as ourselves, 
a spirit of covetousness and detraction. 
How little Christian work even is a 
protection against un-Christian feel- 
ing ! That most despicable of all the 



84 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

unworthy moods which cloud a Chris- 
tian's soul assuredly waits for us on 
the threshold of every work, unless 
we are fortified with this grace of 
magnanimity. Only one thing truly 
need the Christian envy — the large, 
rich, generous soul which "envieth 
not." 

The Greatest Thing in the World, 

Eternal %\t e : 1fts Solution* 

To Christianity, "he that hath the 
Son of God hath L,ife, and he that 
hath not the Son hath not I,ife." 
This, as we take it, defines the corre- 
spondence which is to bridge the grave. 
This is the clue to the nature of the 
Life that lies at the back of the spirit- 
ual organism. And this is the true 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 



solution of the mystery of Eternal 
Life. 

Natural Law: " Eternal Life." 

Eternity 

In the vocabulary of Science, Eter- 
nity is only the fraction of a word. It 
means mere everlastingness. To Re- 
ligion, on the other hand, Eternity 
has little to do with time. To corre- 
spond with the God of Science, the 
Eternal Unknowable, would be ever- 
lasting existence ; to correspond with 
"the true God and Jesus Christ" is 
Eternal Life. The quality of the 
Eternal Life alone makes the heaven ; 
mere everlastingness might be no 
boon. 

Natural Law : " Eternal Life." 



86 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

The want of connection between 
the great words of religion and every- 
day life has bewildered and discouraged 
all of us. 

Pax Vo bis cum. 

Evolution: Mbat is Ut? 

"What about evolution? How 
am I to reconcile my religion, or any 
religion, with the doctrine of evolu- 
tion ?" That upsets more men than 
perhaps anything else at the present 
hour. How would you deal with it? 
I would say to a man that Christianity 
is the further evolution. I don't 
know any better definition than that. 
It is the further evolution — the higher 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 87 

evolution. I don't start with him to 
attack evolution. I don't start with 
him to defend it. I destroy by fulfill- 
ing it. I take him at his own terms. 
He says evolution is that which pushes 
the man on from the simple to the 
complex, from the lower to the higher. 
Very well ; that is what Christianity 
does. It pushes the man farther on. 
It takes him where nature has left 
him, and carries him on to heights 
which on the plane of nature he could 
never reach. That is evolution. 

How to Learn How. 

Evolution, IRatural an& Spiritual, 

As the biologist runs his eye over 
the long Ascent of Life he sees the 



88 MY POINT OF VIKW. 

lowest forms of animals develop in an 
hour ; the next above these reach 
maturity in a day ; those higher still 
take weeks or months to perfect ; but 
the few at the top demand the long ex- 
periment of years. If a child and an 
ape are born on the same day, the last 
will be in full possession of its facul- 
ties and doing the active work of life 
before the child has left its cradle. 
Ivife is the cradle of eternity. As the 
man is to the animal in the slowness 
of his evolution, so is the spiritual 
man to the natural man. Founda- 
tions which have to bear the weight 
of an eternal life must be surely laid. 
Character is to wear for ever ; who 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 89 

will wonder or grudge that it cannot 
be developed in a day ? 

The Changed Life. 

Evolution: ITts jfuture* 

IT is perhaps impossible, with such 
faculties as we now possess, to imag- 
ine Evolution with a future as great 
as its past. So stupendous is the de- 
velopment from the atom to the man 
that no point can be fixed in the fu- 
ture as distant from what man is now 
as he is from the atom. But it has 
been given to Christianity to disclose 
the lines of a further Evolution. 

Natural Law : " Classification." 

jEwiution TUni^ersaL 

Evolution being found in so many 
different sciences, the likelihood is 



90 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

that it is a universal principle. And 
there is no presumption whatever 
against this L,aw and many others be- 
ing excluded from the domain of the 
spiritual life. 

Natural Law. 

BjaQaeratton, 

It will never do to exaggerate one 
truth at the expense of another ; and 
a truth may be turned into a falsehood 
very, very easily, by simply being 
either too much enlarged or too much 
diminished. 

How to Learn How. 

facts. 

Thk great God of science at the 
present time is a fact. It works with 
facts. Its cry is "Give me facts !" 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 9 1 

Found anything you like upon facts 
and we will believe it. The Spirit of 
Christ was the scientific spirit. He 
founded his religion upon facts, and 
He asked all men to found their relig- 
ion upon facts. 

How to Learn How. 

jfattb an& IReason* 

Faith is never opposed to reason 
in the New Testament ; it is opposed 
to sight. 

How to Learn How. 

tfevev*Qcvms. 

It is now known that the human 
body acts toward certain fever-germs 
as a sort of soil. The man whose 
blood is pure has nothing to fear. So 
he whose spirit is purified and sweet- 



92 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

ened becomes proof against these 
germs of sin. "Anger, wrath, mal- 
ice, and railing" in snch a soil can 
find no root. 

Natural Law : " Mortification." 

foob. 

To sustain life, physical, mental, 
moral, or spiritual, some sort of food 
is essential. To secure an adequate 
supply each organism also is provided 
with special and appropriate faculties. 
But the final gain to the organism 
does not depend so much on the 
actual amount of food procured as on 
the exercise required to obtain it. In 
one sense the exercise is only a means 
to an end, namely, the finding food; 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 93 

but in another and equally real sense 
the exercise is the end, the food the 
means to attain that. Neither is of 
permanent use without the other, but 
the correlation between them is so 
intimate that it were idle to say that 
one is more necessary than the other. 
Without food exercise is impossible, 
but without exercise food is useless. 

Natural Law ; " Parasitism." 

jFrfenDsbfp* 

Friendship is the nearest thing we 
know to what religion is. God is 
love. And to make religion akin to 
friendship is simply to give it the 
highest expression conceivable by 
man. 

The Changed Life. 



94 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

^Fundamental iprinctple* 

We never know how little we have 
learned of the fundamental principle 
of Christianity till we discover how 
much we are all bent on supplement- 
ing God's free grace. 

Natural Law : " Growth." 

feneration not Spontaneous* 

A Thousand modern pulpits every 
seventh day are preaching the doc- 
trine of vSpontaneous Generation. 
The finest and best of recent poetry 
is colored with this same error. Spon- 
taneous Generation is the leading 
theology of the modern religious or 
irreligious novel; and much of the 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 95 

most serious and cultured writing 
of the day devotes itself to earnest 
preaching of this impossible gospel. 
The current conception of the Chris- 
tian religion, in short — the conception 
which is held not only popularly, but 
by men of culture — is founded upon 
a view of its origin which, if it were 
true, would render the whole scheme 
abortive. 

Natural Law : " Biogenesis." 



Zhc Gentleman. 

Cakxyle said of Robert Burns that 
there was no truer gentleman in 
Europe than the ploughman-poet. It 
was because he loved everything — the 



96 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

mouse, and the daisy, and all the 
things, great and small, that God 
had made. So with this simple pass- 
port he could mingle with any society, 
and enter courts and palaces from his 
little cottage on the banks of the Ayr. 
You know the meaning of the word 
■ i gentleman. ' ' It means a gentle man 
— a man who does things gently, with 
love. And that is the whole art and 
mystery of it. The gentle man can- 
not in the nature of things do an un- 
gentle, an ungentlemanly, thing. 
The ungentle soul, the inconsiderate, 
unsympathetic nature, cannot do any- 
thing else. ' c Love doth not behave 
itself unseemly." 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 97 

(SoO 1Tne\ntable* 

To every man who truly studies 
Nature there is a God. Call him by 
whatever name — a Creator, a Supreme 
Being, a Great First Cause, a Power 
that makes for Righteousness — Sci- 
ence has a God ; and he who believes 
in this, in spite of all protest, possesses 
a theology. 

Natural Law : " Death." 

(Soft's Circle* 

God is not confined to the outermost 
circle of environment ; He lives and 
moves and has His being in the whole. 
Those who only seek Him in the 
further zone can only find a part. 



98 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

The Christian who knows not God in 
Nature, who does not, that is to say, 
correspond with the whole environ- 
mentj most certainly is partially dead. 

Natural Law : " Death." 

©ob the Urue Environment 

The true environment of the moral 
life is God. Here conscience wakes. 
Here kindles love. Duty here be- 
comes heroic, and that righteousness 
begins to live which alone is to live 
for ever. But if this atmosphere is 
not, the dwarfed soul must perish for 
mere want of its native air. And its 
death is a strictly natural death. It 
is not an exceptional judgment upon 
Atheism. In the same circumstances, 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 99 

in the same averted relation to their 
environment, the poet, the musician, 
the artist, would alike perish to poetry, 
to music, and to art. Every environ- 
ment is a cause. Its effect upon me 
is exactly proportionate to my corre- 
spondence with it. If I correspond 
with part of it, part of myself is in- 
fluenced. If I correspond with more, 
more of myself is influenced ; if with 
all, all is influenced. If I correspond 
with the world, I become worldly ; if 
with God, I become Divine. 

Natural Law : " Death." 

(BoD in mature* 

We have not said, or implied, that 
there is not a God of Nature. We 



IOO MY POINT OF VIEW. 

have not affirmed that there is no 
Natural Religion. We are assured 
there is. We are even assured that 
without a Religion of Nature, Religion 
is only half complete ; that without a 
God of Nature, the God of Revelation 
is only half intelligible and only par- 
tially known. God is not confined to 
the outermost circle of environment. 
He lives and moves and has His being 
in the whole. 

Natural Law : " Death." 

©oMessness* 

IT has never been as clear to us that 
without God the soul will die as that 
without food the body will perish. 

Natural Law : " Environment." 



MY POINT OF VIEW. IOI 



(Sra&attons* 

WE all, reflecting as a mirror the 
character of Christ, are transformed 
into the same Image from character to 
character — from a poor character to a 
better one, from a better one to one a 
little better still, from that to one still 
more complete — until, by slow degrees, 
the Perfect Image is attained. Here 
the solution of the problem of sanctifi- 
cation is compressed into a sentence : 
Reflect the character of Christ and 
you will become like Christ. 

The Changed Life. 



I02 MY POINT OF VIEW. 



(BranDmotbers* 

Boys, if you are going to be Chris- 
tians, be Christians as boys, and not 
as your grandmothers. A grand- 
mother has to be a Christian as a 
grandmother, and that is the right 
and the beautiful thing for her ; but 
if you cannot read your Bible by the 
hour as your grandmother can, or de- 
light in meetings as she can, don't 
think you are necessarily a bad boy. 
When you are your grandmother's 
age you will have your grandmother's 
kind of religion. 

"First r 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 103 

Gravitation, 

When Nature yielded to Newton 
her great secret, gravitation was felt 
to be no greater as a fact in itself 
than as a revelation that Law was 
Fact. 

Natural Law: " Preface." 

Great /iDem 

How do I know Shakespeare or 
Dante? By communing with their 
words and thoughts. Many men, 
know Dante better than their own 
fathers. He influences them more. 
As a spiritual presence he is more 
near to them, as a spiritual force more 
real. Is there any reason why a 



I04 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

greater than Shakespeare or Dante, 
who also walked this earth, who left 
great words behind Him, who has 
great works everywhere in the world 
now, should not also instruct, inspire, 
and mould the characters of men ? 

The Changed Life. 

(Breat TTrutbs* 

The greatest truths are always the 
most loosely held. 

Natural Law : " Biogenesis.' ' 

©rowtb (Sra&ual* 

The gradualness of growth is a 
characteristic which strikes the sim- 
plest observer. Long before the word 
Evolution was coined Christ applied 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 105 

it in this very connection — " First the 
blade, then the ear, then the full corn 
in the ear." It is well known also 
to those who study the parables of 
Nature that there is an ascending 
scale of slowness as we rise in the 
scale of Ivife. Growth is most grad- 
ual in the highest forms. Man attains 
his maturity after a score of years ; 
the monad completes its humble cycle 
in a day. What wonder if develop- 
ment be tardy in the Creature of Eter- 
nity? A Christian's sun has some- 
times set, and a critical world has 
seen as yet no corn in the ear. As 
yet? "As yet," in this long Iyife, 
has not begun. Grant him the years 
proportionate to his place in the scale 



106 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

of Iyife. u The time of harvest is 
not yet ' ' 

Natural Law. 



(Browtb : fits Conditions* 

The; conditions of growth, then, 
and the inward principle of growth 
being both supplied by Nature, the 
thing man has to do, the little junc- 
tion left for him to complete, is to ap- 
ply the one to the other. He manu- 
factures nothing ; he earns nothing ; 
he need be anxious for nothing ; his 
one duty is to be in these conditions, 
to abide in them, to allow grace to 
play over him, to be still therein, and 
know that this is God. 

Natural Law : " Growth." 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 107 

(Browtb IRoiseless* 

Do not think that nothing is hap- 
pening because you do not see your- 
self grow or hear the whirr of the ma- 
chinery. All great things grow noise- 
lessly. You can see a mushroom 
grow, but never a child. 

The Changed Life. 

(Suflelessness* 

GuiLKLKSSNKSS is the grace for sus- 
picious people. And the possession 
of it is the great secret of personal 
influence. You will find, if you 
think for a moment, that the people 
who influence you are people who 
believe in you. In an atmosphere 



108 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

of suspicion men shrivel up; but in 
that atmosphere they expand, and 
find encouragement and educative 
fellowship.. It is a wonderful thing 
that here and there in this hard, 
uncharitable world there should still 
be left a few rare souls who think no 
evil. 

The Greatest Thing in the World, 



Ibatrefc of %\U. 

Why does Christ say, " Hate life" ? 
Does He mean that life is a sin ? No. 
Life is not a sin. Still, He says we 
must hate it. But we must live. Why 
should we hate what we must do ? For 
this reason: Life is not a sin, but the 



MY POINT OF VIEW. IO9 

love of life may be a sin. And the 
best way not to love life is to hate it. 
Is it a sin, then, to love life? Not 
a sin exactly, but a mistake. It is 
a sin to love some life, a mistake to 
love the rest. Because that love is 
lost. All that is lavished on it is 
lost. Christ does not say it is wrong 
to love life. He simply says it is loss. 
Each man has only a certain amount 
of life, of time, of attention — a 
definite, measurable quantity. If he 
gives any of it to this life solely, it is 
wasted. Therefore Christ says, Hate 
life, limit life, lest you steal your love 
for it from something that deserves it 
more. 

Natural Law : " Mortification. " 



IIO MY POINT OF VIEW. 

Ibappiness Xies in (StPincK 

The most obvious lesson in Christ's 
teaching is that there is no happiness 
in having and getting anything, but 
only in giving. And half the world 
is on the wrong scent in pursuit of 
happiness. They think it consists in 
having and getting, and in being 
served by others. It consists in giv- 
ing, and in serving others. He that 
would be great among you, said Christ, 
let him serve. He that would be 
happy, let him remember that there 
is but one way — it is more blessed, it 
is more happy, to give than to re- 
ceive. 

The Greatest Thing in the World, 



MY POINT OF VIEW. Ill 

Ibappiness not a /ID^sters* 

There is no mystery about Happi- 
ness whatever. Put in the right in- 
gredients and it must come out. He 
that abideth in Him will bring forth 
much fruit; and bringing forth much 
fruit is Happiness. The infallible 
receipt for Happiness, then, is to do 
good; and the infallible receipt for 
doing good is to abide in Christ. 

Pax Vobiscum. 

Ibarmons* 

IT is clear that a remarkable har- 
mony exists here between the Organic 
World as arranged by Science and the 



112 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

Spiritual World as arranged by Scrip- 
ture. We find one great Law guard- 
ing the thresholds of both worlds, 
securing that entrance from a lower 
sphere shall only take place by a direct 
regenerating act, and that emanating 
from the world next in order above. 
There are not two laws of Biogenesis, 
one for the natural, the other for the 
Spiritual; one law is for both. Wher- 
ever there is Life, Life of any kind, 
this same law holds. The analogy, 
therefore, is only among the phe- 
nomena; between laws there is no 
analogy — there is Continuity. 

Natural Law : " Biogenesis." 



MY POINT OF VIEW. II3 

Ibealing, 

It is the beautiful work of Chris- 
tianity everywhere to adjust the bur- 
den of life to those who bear it, and 
them to it. It has a perfectly mirac- 
ulous gift of healing. Without doing 
any violence to human nature it sets 
it right with life, harmonizing it with 
all surrounding things, and restoring 
those who are jaded with the fatigue 
and dust of the world to a new grace 
of living. 

Pax Vobiscum. 

tteaven. 

Whatever hopes of a " heaven" 
a neglected soul may have can be 



114 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

shown to be an ignorant and delusive 
dream. How is the soul to escape to 
heaven if it has neglected for a life- 
time the means of escape from the 
world and self? And where is the 
capacity for heaven to come from if it 
be not developed on earth? Where, 
indeed, is even the smallest spiritual 
appreciation of God and heaven to 
come from when so little of spirit- 
uality has ever been known or man- 
ifested here? If every God- ward 
aspiration of the soul has been allowed 
to become extinct, and every inlet that 
was open to heaven to be choked, and 
every talent for religious love and trust 
to have been persistently neglected 
and ignored, where are the faculties 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 115 

to come from that would ever find the 
faiptest relish in such things as God 
and heaven give ? 

Natiwal Law : " Degeneration." 



1bere&it£* 

What Heredity has to do for us is 
determined outside ourselves. No 
man can select his own parents. But 
every man to some extent can choose 
his own Environment. His relation 
to it, however largely determined by 
Heredity in the first instance, is always 
open to alteration. And so great is 
his control over Environment, and so 
radical its influence over him, that he 
can so direct it as either to undo, 



Il6 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

modify, perpetuate, or intensify the 
earlier hereditary influence within 
certain limits. 

Natural Law : " Environment." 



1foeres£* 

HERESY is truth in the making, 
and doubt is the prelude of know- 
ledge. 

How to Learn How, 



ITmitattom 

Imitation is mechanical, reflec- 
tion organic. The one is occasional, 
the other habitual. In the one case 
man comes to God and imitates him ; 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 117 

in the other God comes to man and 
imprints himself upon him. 

The Changed Life, 



Ifmmortalttg, 

No truth of Christianity has been 
more ignorantly or wilfully travestied 
than the doctrine of Immortality. 
The popular idea, in spite of a hundred 
protests, is that Eternal Life is to live 
for ever. A single glance at the locus 
classtcus might have made this error 
impossible. There we are told that 
Life Eternal is not to live. This is 
Life Eternal — to know. And yet — 
and it is a notorious instance of the 
fact that men who are opposed to Re- 



Il8 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

ligion will take their conceptions of 
its profonndest truths from mere vulgar 
perversions — this view still represents 
to many cultivated men the Scriptural 
doctrine of Eternal Life. From time 
to time the taunt is thrown at Re- 
ligion, not unseldom from lips which 
Science ought to have taught more 
caution, that the Future Life of Chris- 
tianity is simply a prolonged existence, 
an eternal monotony, a blind and in- 
definite continuance of being. The 
Bible never could commit itself to any 
such platitudes, nor could Christianity 
ever offer to the world a hope so color- 
less. 

Natural Law : " Eternal Life." 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 119 

imperfections of tbe (BoMs* 

. The sneer at the godly man for his 
imperfections is ill-judged. A blade 
is a small thing. At first it grows 
very near the earth. It is often soiled 
and crushed and downtrodden. But 
it is a living thing. That great dead 
stone beside it is more imposing ; only 
it will never be anything less than a 
stone. But this small blade — it doth 
not yet appear what it shall be. 

Natural Law ; " Growth." 

flmpresseb forces* 

According to the first Law of 
Motion : Every body continues in its 
state of rest, or of uniform motion in 



ISO MY POINT OF VIEW. 

a straight line, except in so far as it 
may be compelled by impressed forces 
to change that state. This is also a 
first law of Christianity. Every man' s 
character remains as it is, or continues 
in the direction in which it is going, 
until it is compelled by impressed forces 
to change that state. 

The Changed Life. 



irmprovement 

No man can become a saint in his 
sleep ; and to fulfil the condition re- 
quired demands a certain amount of 
prayer and meditation and time, just 
as improvement in any direction, bod- 
ily or mental, requires preparation 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 121 

and care. Address yourselves to that 
one thing ; at any cost have this 
transcendent character exchanged for 
yours. 

The Greatest Thin* in the World. 



IFnabUits* 

The doctrine of Human Inability, 
as the Church calls it, has always 
been objectionable to men who do 
not know themselves. 

Natural Law ; " Conformity to Type." 

incitement 

God has planned the world to in- 
cite to intellectual activity. 

How to Learn How. 



122 MY POINT OF VIKW. 

Incompleteness* 

Who has not come to the conclu- 
sion that he is but a part, a fraction 
of some larger whole ? Who does not 
miss at every turn of his life an ab- 
sent God? That man is but a part 
he knows, for there is room in him 
for more. That God is the other part 
he feels, because at times He satisfies 
his need. Who does not tremble 
often under that sicklier symptom of 
his incompleteness, his want of spirit- 
ual energy, his helplessness with sin ? 
But now he understands both — the 
void in his life, the powerlessuess of 
his will. He understands that, like 
all other energy, spiritual power is 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 123 

contained in Environment. He finds 
here at last the true root of all human 
frailty, emptiness, nothingness, sin. 
This is why " without Me ye can do 
nothing." Powerless is the normal 
state not only of this but of every 
organism — of every organism apart 
from its Environment. 

Natural Law : " Environment." 

inconsistency 

The result of copying Humility 
and adding it on to an otherwise 
worldly life is simply grotesque. 

The Changed Life. 

influence. 

It is the Law of Influence that we 
become like those whom zve habitual- 



124 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

ly admire: these had become like 
because -they habitually admired. 
Through all the range of literature, 
history, and biography this law pre- 
sides. Men are all mosaics of other 
men. There was a savor of David 
about Jonathan, and a savor of Jona- 
than about David. Jean Valjean, in 
the masterpiece of Victor Hugo, is 
Bishop Bienvenu risen from the dead. 
Metempsychosis is a fact. 

The Changed Life, 

insanity. 

Suppose the case of a man who is 
thrown out of correspondence with a 
part of his environment by some 
physical infirmity. Let it be that 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 125 

by disease or accident he has been 
deprived of the use of his ears. The 
deaf man, in virtue of this imperfec- 
tion, is thrown out of rapport with a 
large and well-defined part of the en- 
vironment, namely, its sounds. With 
regard to that u external relation," 
therefore, he is no longer living. Part 
of him may truly be held to be in- 
sensible or "dead." A man who is 
also blind is thrown out of corre- 
spondence with another large part of 
his environment. The beauty of sea 
and sky, the forms of cloud and moun- 
tain, the features and gestures of 
friends, are to him as if they were 
not. They are there, solid and real, 
but not to him ; he is still further 



126 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

, g - 

' ' dead. ' ' Next, let it be conceived, 
the subtle finger of cerebral disease 
lays hold of him. His whole brain 
is affected, and the sensory nerves, the 
medium of communication with the 
environment, cease altogether to ac- 
quaint him with what is doing in the 
outside world. The outside world is 
still there, but not to him ; he is still 
further "dead." 

Natural Law : " Death." 

Inspiration* 

With the inspiration of Nature to 
illuminate what the inspiration of 
Revelation has left obscure, heresy 
in certain whole departments shall 
become impossible. With the demon- 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 1 27 

stration of the naturalness of the 
supernatural, scepticism even may 
come to be regarded as unscientific. 
And those who have wrestled long 
for a few bare truths to ennoble life 
and rest their souls in thinking of the 
future will not be left in doubt. 

Natural Law : " Introduction. " 

Intellect 

Then comes a very important part, 
the intellect, which is one of the most 
useful servants of truth ; and I need 
not tell you as students that the intel- 
lect will have a great deal to do with 
your reception of truth. I was told 
that it was said at these conferences 
last year that a man must crucify his 



128 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

intellect. I venture to contradict the 
gentleman who made that statement. 
I am quite sure no such statement 
could ever have been made in your 
hearing — that we were to crucify our 
intellects. We can make no progress 
without the full use of all the intel- 
lectual powers that God has endowed 
us with. 

How to Learn How. 

Inventions* 

At every workshop you will see, in 
the back yard, a heap of old iron, a 
few levers, a few cranks, broken and 
eaten with rust. Twenty years ago 
that was the pride of the city. Men 
flocked in from the country to see the 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 129 

— — § — 

great invention; now it is superseded, 
its day is done. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 

3o£ : 1fcow Bttame&, 

Where does Joy come from? I 
knew a Sunday scholar whose concep- 
tion of Joy was that it was a thing 
made in lumps and kept somewhere 
in Heaven, and that when people 
prayed for it pieces were somehow 
let down and fitted into their souls. 
I am not sure that views as gross and 
material are not often held by people 
who ought to be wiser. In reality, 
Joy is as much a matter of Cause and 
Effect as pain. No one can get Joy 
by merely asking for it. It is one of 



130 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

the ripest fruits of the Christian life, 
and, like all fruits, must be grown. 

Pax Vobiscum. 

Su&oment H>as* 

IT is the Son of Man before whom 
the nations of the world shall be gath- 
ered. It is in the presence of Human- 
ity that we shall be charged. And 
the spectacle itself, the mere sight of 
it, will silently judge each one. Those 
will be there whom we have met and 
helped ; or there the unpitying mul- 
titude whom we neglected or despised. 
No other witness need be summoned. 
No other charge than lovelessness 
shall be preferred. Be not deceived. 
The words which all of us shall one 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 131 

day hear sound not of theology, but 
of life ; not of churches and saints, 
but of the hungry and the poor ; not 
of creeds and doctrines, but of shelter 
and clothing ; not of Bibles and pray- 
er-books, but of cups of cold water in 
the name of Christ. 

The Greatest Ihing in the World. 

Ike^notes, 

Every character has an inward 
spring. Let Christ be it. Every 
action has a keynote. L,et Christ 
set it. 

The Changed Life, 

IRin&ness* 

I wonder why it is we are not all 
kinder than we are ? How much the 



132 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

world needs it ! How easily it is 
done ! How instantaneously it acts ! 
How infallibly it is remembered ! 
How superabundantly it pays itself 
back ! For there is no debtor in the 
world so honorable, so superbly hon- 
orable, as Love. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 

IRinftness of Cbrtst 

Havk you ever noticed how much 
of Christ's life was spent in doing 
kind things — in merely doing kind 
things ? Run over it with that in view, 
and you will find that He spent a 
great proportion of His time simply 
in making people happy, in doing 
good tu^rns to people. There is only 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 1 33 

one thing greater than happiness 
in the world, and that is holiness ; 
and it is not in our keeping ; but 
what God has put in our power is 
the happiness of those about us, and 
that is largely to be secured by our 
being kind to them. 

The Greatest Thing in the World, 

Ikfng&oms, 

As a merely verbal matter the 
identification of the Spiritual World 
with what are known to Science as 
Kingdoms necessitates an explan- 
ation. The suggested relation of 
the Kingdom of Christ to the Mineral 
and Animal Kingdoms does not, of 
course, depend upon the accident 



134 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

that the Spiritual World is named 
in the sacred writings by the same 
word. This certainly lends an ap- 
pearance of fancy to the generaliza- 
tion, and one feels tempted at first 
to dismiss it with a smile. But, in 
truth, it is no mere play on the word 
Kingdom. Science demands the 
classification of every organism. 
And here is an organism of a unique 
kind, a living, energetic spirit, a new 
creature which, by an act of gene- 
ration, has been begotten of God. 
Starting from the point that the 
spiritual life is to be studied biologi- 
cally, we must at once proceed, as the 
first step in the scientific examination 
of this organism, to enter it in its 



MY POINT OF VIEW. I35 

appropriate class. Now two King- 
doms, at the present time, are known 
to Science — the Inorganic and the 
Organic. It does not belong to the 
Inorganic Kingdom, because it lives. 
It does not belong to the Organic 
Kingdom, because it is endowed with 
a kind of Iyife infinitely removed 
from either the vegetable or animal. 
Where, then, shall it be classed? 
We are left without an alternative. 
There being no Kingdom known to 
Science which can contain it, we 
must construct one. Or, rather, we 
must include in the programme of 
Science a Kingdom already con- 
structed, but the place of which in 
science has not yet been recognized. 



136 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

That Kingdom is the Kingdom of 
God. 

Natural Law : " Classification." 



Iftingfcom of (Soft* 

The kingdom of God is not going 
to religious meetings and hearing 
strange religious experiences. The 
kingdom of God is doing what is 
right — living at peace with all men, 
being filled with joy in the Holy 
Ghost. 

"First!" 

IRnowle&Qe, 

The wisdom of the ancients — where 
is it? It is wholly gone. A school- 
boy to-day knows more than Sir Isaac 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 1 37 

Newton knew. His knowledge has 
vanished away. You- buy the old edi- 
tions of the great encyclopaedias for 
a few pence. Their knowledge has 
faded away. And all the boasted sci- 
ence and philosophy of this day will 
soon be old. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 



The most popular book in the Eng- 
lish tongue at the present time, ex- 
cept the Bible, is one of Dickens's 
works, his Pickwick Papers. It is 
largely written in the language of 
London street-life, and experts assure 
us that in fifty years it will be unin- 



138 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

telligible to the average English 
reader. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 



The world, even the religious world, 
is governed by law. Character is 
governed by law. Happiness is gov- 
erned by law. The Christian experi- 
ences are governed by law. Men, for- 
getting this, expect Rest, Joy, Peace, 
Faith, to drop into their souls from 
the air, like snow or rain. 

Pax Vobiscum. 

The fundamental conception of 
I<aw is an ascertained working se- 
quence or constant order among the 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 1 39 

phenomena of Nature. This impres- 
sion of Law as order it is important 
to receive in its simplicity, for the 
idea is often corrupted by having at- 
tached to it erroneous views of cause 
and effect. In its true sense Natural 
Law predicates nothing of causes. 

Natural Law : " Introduction." 

IReign of %aw* 

The Reign of Law has gradually 
crept into every department of Nature, 
transforming knowledge everywhere 
into Science. The process goes on, 
and Nature slowly appears to us as 
one great unity, until the borders of 
the Spiritual World are reached. 

Natural Law : " Introduction." 



140 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

3Law t IRatural ant) Spiritual* 

The real problem I have set myself 
may be stated in a sentence. Is there 
not reason to believe that many of the 
Laws of the Spiritual World, hitherto 
regarded as occupying an entirely 
separate province, are simply the Laws 
of the Natural World ? Can we iden- 
tify the Natural Laws, or any one of 
them, in the spiritual sphere? That 
vague lines everywhere run through 
the Spiritual World is already begin- 
ning to be recognized. Is it possible 
to link them with those great lines 
running through the visible universe 
which we call the Natural Laws, or 
are they fundamentally distinct? In 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 141 

a word, Is the Supernatural natural or 
unnatural ? 

Natural Law : " Preface." 

Xaw of IRature* 

There is a sense of solidity about 
a Law of Nature which belongs to 
nothing else in the world. Here, at 
last, amid all that is shifting, is one 
thing sure ; one thing outside our- 
selves, unbiassed, unprejudiced, unin- 
fluenced by like or dislike, by doubt 
or fear ; one thing that holds on its 
way to me eternally, incorruptible, 
and undefiled. This, more than any- 
thing else, makes one eager to see the 
Reign of Law traced in the Spiritual 
Sphere. 

Natural Law : " Preface." 



142 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

3Laws not ©perators* 

IvAWS do not act upon anything. 
Apparently it cannot be too abun- 
dantly emphasized that L,aws are only 
modes of operation, not themselves 
operators. 

Natural Law : " Introduction." 



Xffe a Correspondence* 

To find a new Environment again 
and cultivate relation with it is to find 
a new Life. To live is to correspond, 
and to correspond is to live. So much 
is true in Science. But it is also true 
in Religion. And it is of great im- 
portance to observe that to Religion 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 1 43 

also the conception of Life is a corre- 
spondence. 

Natural Law : " Eternal Life." 

%itc is 2>effnite, 

Life is not one of the homeless 
forces which promiscuously inhabit 
space, or which can be gathered like 
electricity from the clouds and dissi- 
pated back again into space. Life is 
definite and resident ; and Spiritual 
Life is not a visit from a force, but a 
resident tenant in the soul. 

Natural Law: " Introduction." 

Xffe a fine HrL 

WE grow up at random, carrying 
into mature life the merely animal 



144 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

■ methods and motives which we had 
as little children. And it does not 
occur to us that all this must be 
changed ; that much of it must be 
reversed ; that life is the finest of the 
Fine Arts ; that it has to be learned 
with life-long patience, and that the 
years of our pilgrimage are all too 
short to master it triumphantly. 

Pax Vobiscum. 

Xfgbt anD %ovc. 

IyiGHT is a something more than the 
sum of its ingredients — a glowing, 
dazzling, tremulous ether. And love 
is something more than all its ele- 
ments — a palpitating, quivering, sen- 
sitive, living thing. By synthesis of 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 1 45 

all the colors men can make white- 
ness, they cannot make light By 
synthesis of all the virtues men can 
make virtue, they cannot make love. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 

Zhe Xocftet 

There lived once a young girl 
whose perfect grace of character was 
the wonder of those who knew her. 
She wore on her neck a gold locket 
which no one was ever allowed to 
open. One day, in a moment of un- 
usual confidence, one of her com- 
panions was allowed to touch its 
spring and learn its secret. She saw 
written these words : "Whom having 

not seen, I love. ' ' That was the secret 
10 



146 MY POINT OK VIEW. 

of her beautiful life. She had been 
changed into the Same Image. 

The Changed Life. 



All about us, Christians are wear- 
ing themselves out in trying to be bet- 
ter. The amount of spiritual longing 
in the world — in the hearts of unnum- 
bered thousands of men and women 
in whom we should never suspect it; 
among the wise and thoughtful; 
among the young and gay, who 
seldom assuage and never betray their 
thirst, — this is one of the most won- 
derful and touching facts of life. It 
is not more heat that is needed, but 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 1 47 

more light; not more force, but a 
wiser direction to be given to very 
real energies already there. 

Pax V obis cum. 

Ube Xost 

The Bible view is that man is con- 
ceived in sin and shapen in iniquity. 
And experience tells him that he will 
shape himself into further sin and 
ever-deepening iniquity without the 
smallest effort, without in the least 
intending it, and in the most natural 
way in the world, if he simply let 
his life run. It is on this principle 
that, completing the conception, the 
wicked are said further in the Bible 
to be lost. They are not really lost 



148 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

as yet, but they are on the sure way 
to it. The bias of their lives is in 
full action. There is no drag on any- 
where. The natural tendencies are 
having it all their own way; and 
although the victims may be quite 
unconscious that all this is going on, 
it is patent to every one who con- 
siders even the •natural bearings of 
the case that "the end of these 
things is Death. " 

Natural Law : " Degeneration.' ' 

Xove anfc Xaw* 

You remember the profound re- 
mark which Paul makes, u L,ove is 
the fulfilling of the law." Did you 
ever think what he meant by that? 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 1 49 

In those days men were working 
their passage to Heaven by keeping 
the Ten Commandments, and the 
hundred and ten other command- 
ments which they had manufactured 
out of them. Christ said, I will 
show you a more simple way. If 
you do one thing, you will do these 
hundred and ten 'things, without 
ever thinking about them. If you 
love, you will unconsciously fulfil 
the whole law. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 

%ovc UmmortaL 

WE know but little now about the 
conditions of the life that is to come. 
But what is certain is that L,ove must 



150 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

last. God, the Eternal God, is Love. 
Covet, therefore, that everlasting gift, 
that one thing which it is certain is 
going to stand, that one coinage 
which will be current in the universe 
when all the other coinages of all 
the nations of the world shall be 
useless and unhonored. You will 
give yourselves to many things; give 
yourself first to Love. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 

%ovc is patience. 

Love is Patience, This is the 
normal attitude of Love; Love pas- 
sive, Love waiting to begin; not in 
a hurry; calm; ready to do its work 
when the summons comes, but mean- 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 151 

time wearing the ornament of a meek 
and quiet spirit. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 

XowUness, 

Men sigh for the wings of a dove, 
that they may fly away and be at rest. 
But flying away will not help us. 
" The Kingdom of God is within 
you. ' ' We aspire to the top to look 
for rest ; it lies at the bottom. Water 
rests only when it gets to the lowest 
place. So do men. Hence be lowly. 

Pax Vobiscum. 

/IDagnets* 

Put a piece of iron in the presence 
of an electrified body and that piece 
of iron for a time becomes electrified. 



152 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

It is changed into a temporary magnet 
in the mere presence of a permanent 
magnet, and as long as you leave the 
two side by side they are both magnets 
alike. Remain side by side with Him 
who loved us and gave Himself for us, 
and you too will become a permanent 
magnet, a permanently attractive force; 
and like Him you will draw all men 
unto you, like Him you will be drawn 
unto all men. That is the inevitable 
effect of Iyove. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 

/toasters* 

He who seeks to serve two masters 
misses the benediction of both. 

Natural Law : " Mortification." 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 1 53 



/IDaterials, 

The lowest or mineral world mainly 
supplies the material — and this is true 
even for insectivorous species — for the 
vegetable kingdom. The vegetable 
supplies the material for the animal. 
Next in turn, the animal furnishes 
material for the mental ; and lastly, 
the mental for the spiritual. Each 
member of the series is complete only 
when the steps below it are complete ; 
the highest demands all. 

Natural Law ; " Conformity to Type." 

Realize it thoroughly : it is a 
methodical, not an accidental world. 

Pax Vo bis cum. 



154 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

/IfMneral, flesh, Spirit 

The first Law of biology is, That 
which is Mineral is Mineral ; that 
which is Flesh is Flesh ; that which 
is Spirit is Spirit. The mineral re- 
mains in the inorganic world until it 
is seized upon by a something called 
L,ife outside the inorganic world ; the 
natural man remains the natural man 
until a Spiritual Life from without 
the natural life seizes upon him, re- 
generates him, changes him into a 
spiritual man. 

Natural Law : " Classification." 

Ube /BMnistrs* 

The advantage of the ministry is 
that a man's whole life can be thrown 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 1 55 

into the carrying out of that pro- 
gramme without any deduction. An- 
other advantage of the ministry is that 
it is so poorly paid that a man is not 
tempted to cut a dash and shine in the 
world, but can be meek and lowly in 
heart, like his Master. It is enough 
for a servant to be like his master, and 
there is a great attraction in seeking 
obscurity, even isolation, if one can 
be following the highest ideals. 

What is a Christian ? 

/HMracle, 

That question is thrown at my 
head every second day : " What do you 
say to a man when he says to you, 
( Why do you believe in miracles?' M 



156 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

I say, " Because I have seen them." 
He says, "When?" I .say, "Yester- 
day. ' ' He says, ' ' Where ?' ' " Down 
such-and-such a street I saw a man 
who was a drunkard redeemed by the 
power of an unseen Christ and saved 
from sin. That is a miracle. ' ' The 
best apologetic for Christianity is a 
Christian. That is a fact which the 
man cannot get over. There are fifty 
other arguments for miracles, but 
none so good as that you have seen 
them. Perhaps you are one yourself. 
But take you a man and show him a 
miracle with his own eyes. Then he 
will believe. 

How to Learn How. 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 1 57 

/llMrrors, 

One of the aptest descriptions of a 
human being is that he is a mirror. 
As we sat at table to-night the world 
in which each of us lived and moved 
throughout this day was focussed in 
the room. What we saw as we look- 
ed at one another was not one an- 
other, but one another's world. We 
were an arrangement of mirrors. The 
scenes we saw were all reproduced ; 
the people we met walked to and fro ; 
they spoke, they bowed, they passed 
us by, did everything over again as 
if it had been real. When we talked 
we were but looking at our own mir- 
ror and describing what flitted across 



158 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

it. Our listening was not hearing, 
but seeing — we but looked on our 
neighbor's mirror. All human inter- 
course is a seeing of reflections. 

The Changed Life. 

Ube XTrue /iDissionarp* 

IT is the man who is the mission- 
ary, it is not his words. His charac- 
ter is his message. In the heart of 
Africa, among the Great Lakes, I 
have come across men and women 
who remembered the only white man 
they ever saw before — David Irving- 
stone ; and as you cross his footsteps 
in that dark continent, men's faces 
light up as they speak of the kind 
Doctor who passed there years ago. 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 1 59 

They could not understand him ; but 
they felt the Love that beat in his 
heart. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 

/IDfssfonarp Enterprise* 

Science has a duty in pointing out 
that no devotion or enthusiasm can 
give any man a charmed life, and 
that those who work for the highest 
ends will best attain them in humble 
obedience to the common laws. Tran- 
sceqdentally, this may be denied ; the 
warning finger may be despised as 
the hand of the coward and the pro- 
fane. But the fact remains — the fact 
of an awful chain of English graves 
stretching across Africa. This is not 



l6o MY POINT OF VIEW. 

spoken, nevertheless, to discourage 
missionary enterprise. It is only said 
to regulate it. 

Tropical Africa, 



/IDisunberstanbing* 

Thk religion of Jesus has probably 
always suffered more from those who 
have misunderstood than from those 
who have opposed it. Of the multi- 
tudes who confess Christianity at this 
hour how many have clear in their 
minds the cardinal distinction estab- 
lished by its Founder between u born 
of the flesh" and "born of the 
Spirit n ? By how many teachers of 
Christianity even is not this funda- 



MY POINT OF VIEW. l6l 

mental postulate persistently ig- 
nored ! 

Natural Law : " Introduction." 

What history testifies to is first the 
partial, and then the total, eclipse of 
virtue that always follows the aban- 
donment of belief in a personal God. 
It is not, as has been pointed out 
a hundred times, that morality in 
the abstract disappears, but the 
motive and sanction are gone. There 
is nothing to raise it from the dead. 
Man's attitude to it is left to himself. 
Grant that morals have their own 
base in human life; grant that Nature 

has a Religion who3e creed is Science; 
11 



1 62 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

there is yet nothing apart from God 
to save the world from moral Death. 
Morality has the power to dictate, 
but none to move. Nature directs, 
but cannot control. 

Natural Law : " Death." 

/IBortificatton* 

The Mortification of a member, 
again, is based on the Law of Degen- 
eration. The useless member here is 
not cut off, but simply relieved as 
much as possible of all exercise. This 
encourages the gradual decay of the 
parts, and as it is more and more 
neglected it ceases to be a channel 
for life at all. So an organism 
u mortifies" its members. 

Natural Law : " Mortification." 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 1 63 



flusters* 

What is mystery to many men, 
what feeds their worship and at the 
same time spoils it, is that area round 
all great truth which is really capable 
of illumination, and into which every 
earnest mind is permitted and com- 
manded to go with a light. We cry 
4 ' Mystery ' ' long before the region 
of mystery comes. True mystery 
casts no shadows around. It is a 
sudden and awful gulf yawning 
across the field of knowledge; its 
form is irregular, but its lips are 
clean-cut and sharp, and the mind 
can go to the very verge and look 



164 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

down the precipice into the dim 
abyss 

" Where writhing clouds unroll, 
Striving to utter themselves in shapes." 

Natural Law : " Biogenesis." 



/flusters Everswbere* 

A Science without mystery is un- 
known; a Religion without mystery 
is absurd. The elimination of mys- 
tery from the universe is the elimina- 
tion of Religion. However far the 
scientific method may penetrate the 
Spiritual World, there will always 
remain a region to be explored by 
a scientific faith. 

Natural Law : " Introduction." 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 1 65 

IRarrowness of 3S5rea&tIx 

If, instead of looking on and crit- 
icising those who know a thing or 
two, those who think they are wiser, 
and that they have the whole truth, 
would throw themselves in among 
others, and back them, and try to 
work alongside of them, they would 
get perhaps their breadth tempered by 
earnestness and by zeal, because the 
narrow man has much to contribute 
to the Christian cause, perhaps more 
than the broad man. 

What Is a Christian ? 

IRatural Xaws, 

The Laws of Nature are simply 
statements of the orderly condition of 



1 66 MY POINT OK VIEW. 

things in Nature — what is found in 
Nature by a sufficient number of com- 
petent observers. What these Laws 
are in themselves is not agreed. That 
they have any absolute existence, 
even, is far from certain. They are 
relative to man in his many limita- 
tions, and represent for him the con- 
stant expression of what he may al- 
ways expect to find in the world 
around him. But that they have 
any causal connection with the things 
around him is not to be conceived. 
The Natural L,aws originate nothing, 
sustain nothing ; they are merely re- 
sponsible for uniformity in sustaining 
what has been originated and what is 
being sustained. They are modes of 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 1 67 

operation, therefore, not operators ; 
processes, not powers. 

Natural Law : " Introduction." 

The Natural Laws, then, are great 
lines running not only through the 
world, but, as we now know, through 
the universe, reducing it like parallels 
of latitude to intelligent order. In 
themselves, be it once more repeated, 
they may have no more absolute 
existence than parallels of latitude. 
But they exist for us. They are 
drawn for us to understand the part 
by some Hand that drew the whole; 
so drawn, perhaps, that, understand- 
ing the part, we too, in time, may 
learn to understand the whole. 

Natural Law : " Introduction." 



l68 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

IRatural anb Spiritual, 

The Spiritual World is simply the 
outermost segment, circle, or circles 
of the Natural World. For purposes 
of convenience we separate the two, 
just as we separate the animal world 
from the plant. But the animal world 
and the plant world are the same 
world. They are different parts of 
one environment. And the natural 
and spiritual are likewise one. The 
inner circles are called the natural, 
the outer the spiritual. And we call 
them spiritual simply because they 
are beyond us or beyond a part of us. 
What we have correspondence with, 
that we call natural ; what we have 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 1 69 

little or no correspondence with, that 
we call spiritual. But when the ap- 
propriate corresponding organism ap- 
pears — the organism, that is, which 
can freely communicate with these 
outer circles — the distinction neces- 
sarily disappears. The spiritual to it 
becomes the outer circle of the 
natural. 

Natural Law : " Death." 

IRatural an& Supernatural* 

The mental and moral world is un- 
known to the plant. But it is real. 
It cannot be affirmed either that it is 
unnatural to the plant ; although it 
might be said that from the point of 
view of the Vegetable Kingdom it 



170 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

was supernatural. Things are natural 
or supernatural simply according to 
where one stands. Man is super- 
natural to the mineral ; God is super- 
natural to the man. When a mineral 
is seized upon by the living plant and 
elevated to the organic kingdom, no 
trespass against Nature is committed. 
It merely enters a larger Environment, 
which before was supernatural to it, 
but which now is entirely natural. 
When the heart of a man, again, is 
seized upon by the quickening Spirit 
of God, no further violence is done to 
natural law. It is another case of the 
inorganic, so to speak, passing into 
the organic. 

Natwal Law : " Eternal Life." 



MY POINT OF VIKW. 171 

IWature a 1barmon£* 

If Nature be a harmony, man in 
all his relations — physical, mental, 
moral, and spiritual — falls to be in- 
cluded within its circle. It is alto- 
gether unlikely that man spiritual 
should be violently separated in all 
the conditions of growth, develop- 
ment, and life from man physical. 
It is indeed difficult to conceive that 
one set of principles should guide 
the natural life, and these at a certain 
period — the very point where they 
are needed — suddenly give place to 
another set of principles altogether 
new and unrelated. Nature has never 
taught us to expect such a catastro- 



1J2 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

phe. She has nowhere prepared us 
for it. And man cannot in the 
nature of things, in the nature of 
thought, in the nature of language, 
be separated into two such incoherent 
halves. 

Natural Law: " Introduction.' ' 



IRature a Symbol* 

With Nature as the symbol of all 
of harmony and beauty that is known 
to man, must we still talk of the super- 
natural, not as a convenient word, but 
as a different order of world, an unin- 
telligible world, where the. Reign of 
Mystery supersedes the Reign of 
Law? 

Natural Lazv ; " Introduction." 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 1 73 



IRature a MorInna*/H>o&el of tbe 
Spiritual* 

So the Spiritual World becomes 
slowly Natural ; and, what is of all 
but equal moment, the Natural World 
becomes slowly Spiritual. Nature is 
not a mere image or emblem of the 
Spiritual. It is a w r orking-model of 
the Spiritual. In the Spiritual World 
the same wheels revolve — but without 
the iron. The same figures flit across 
the stage, the same processes of growth 
go on, the same functions are dis- 
charged, the same biological laws 
prevail — only with a different quality 
of Bios. Plato's prisoner, if not out 



174 MY POINT OF VIKW. 

of the Cave, has at least his face to 
the light. 

Natural Law ; " Introduction." 



IRature anb /iDam 

WE find that in maintaining this 
natural life Nature has a share and 
man has a share. By far the larger 
part is done for us — the breathing, 
the secreting, the circulating of the 
blood, the building up of the organ- 
ism. And although the part which 
man plays is a minor part, yet, strange 
to say, it is not less essential to the 
well-being, and even to the being of 
the whole. For instance, man has 
to take food. He has nothing to do 
with it after he has once taken it, for 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 1 75 

the moment it passes his lips it is 
taken in hand by reflex actions and 
handed on from one organ to another, 
his control over it, in the natural 
course of things, being completely 
lost. But the initial act was his. 
And without that nothing could have 
been done. Now, whether there be 
an exact analogy between the volun- 
tary and involuntary functions in the 
body and the corresponding processes 
in the soul we do not at present in- 
quire. But this will indicate, at 
least, that man has his own part to 
play. Let him choose Life; let him 
daily nourish his soul; let him for 
ever starve the old life; let him abide 
continuously as a living branch in 



176 MY POINT OF VIKW. 

the Vine, and the True-Vine Life 
will flow into his soul; assimilating, 
renewing, conforming to Type, till 
Christ, pledged by His own law, be 
formed in him. 

Natural Law : " Conformity to Type." 

mature anfc> ZlDoralits* 

Nature and Morality provide all 
for virtue — except the Life to live it. 

Natural Law : " Death." 

IFlegatives* 

REUGiON does not consist in nega- 
tives, in stopping this sin and stopping 
that. The perfect character can never 
be produced with a pruning-knife. 

The Changed Life. 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 1 77 

Beglect 

From the very nature of salvation 
it is plain that the only thing neces- 
sary to make it of no effect is neglect. 
Hence the Bible could not fail to lay 
strong emphasis on a word so vital. 
It was not necessary for it to say, How 
shall we escape if we trample upon 
the great salvation, or doubt or despise 
or reject it? A man who has been 
poisoned only need neglect the anti- 
dote and he will die. It makes no 
difference whether he dashes it on the 
ground, or pours it out of the window, 
or sets it down by his bedside and 
stares at it all the time he is dying. 

He will die just the same, whether he 
12 



178 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

destroys it in a passion or coolly refuses 
to have anything to do with it. And, 
as a matter of fact, probably most 
deaths, spiritually, are gradual disso- 
lutions of the last class rather than 
rash suicides of the first. 

Natural Law : " Degeneration." 

If we neglect the ordinary means 
of keeping a garden in order, how 
shall it escape running to weeds and 
waste? Or if we neglect the oppor- 
tunities for cultivating the mind, how 
shall it escape ignorance and feeble- 
ness ? So, if we neglect the soul, how 
shall it escape the natural retrograde 
movement, the inevitable relapse into 
barrenness and death ? 

Natural Law : " Degeneration." 



MY POINT OE VIEW. 179 

Ube IRew Ibeart 

Religion does not tell us to give 
things up, but rather gives us some- 
thing so much better that they give 
themselves up. Instead of telling 
people to give up things, we are safer 
to tell them to " seek first the king- 
dom of God, ' ' and then they will get 
new things and better things, and the 
old things will drop off of themselves. 
This is what is meant by the new 
heart. 

"First!" 

©be&ience* 

What was Christ doing in the car- 
penter's shop? Practising. Though 
perfect, we read that he learned obe- 



l8o MY POINT OF VIEW. 

dience, and grew in wisdom and in 
favor with God. 

7he Greatest Thing in the World. 

©be&ience anfc> 1Rnowie&0e* 

Somk of you remember a Sermon 
of Robertson of Brighton, entitled, 
4 'Obedience the Organ of Spiritual 
Knowledge. ' ' A very startling title ! 
— " Obedience the Organ of Spiritual 
Knowledge. n The Pharisees asked 
about Christ: u How knoweth this 
man letters, never having learned?" 
How knoweth this man, never hav- 
ing learned? The organ of know- 
ledge is not nearly so much mind, as 
the organ that Christ used, namely, 
obedience ; and that was the organ 



MY POINT OF VIEW. l8l 

which He Himself insisted upon 
when He said, "He that willeth to 
do His will shall know of the doc- 
trine whether it be of God. n You 
have all noticed, of course, that the 
words in the original are, "If any 
man will to do His will, he shall 
know of the doctrine." It doesn't 
read, u If any do His will," which no 
man can do perfectly ; but if any man 
be simply willing to do His will — if 
he has an absolutely undivided mind 
about it — that man will know what 
truth is and what falsehood is ; a 
stranger will he not follow. And 
that is by far the best source of spirit- 
ual knowledge on every account — 
obedience to God — absolute sincerity 



l82 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

and loyalty in following Christ. ' c If 
any man do His will, he shall know ' ' 
— a very remarkable association of 
knowledge, a thing which is usual- 
ly considered quite intellectual, with 
obedience, which is moral and spirit- 
ual. 

How to Learn How. 



©rfcer, Spiritual ant> IRatural 

Thk spiritual man is not taxed be- 
yond the natural. He is not purpose- 
ly handicapped by singular limitations 
or unusual incapacities. God has not 
designedly made the religious life as 
hard as possible. The arrangements 
for the spiritual life are the same as 
for the natural life. When in their 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 183 

hours of unbelief men challenge their 
Creator for placing the obstacle of 
human frailty in the way of their 
highest development, their protest is 
against the order of nature. They 
object to the sun for being the source 
of energy, and not the engine ; to the 
carbonic acid being in the air, and 
not in the plant. They would equip 
each organism with a personal atmo- 
sphere, each brain with a private store 
of energy ; they would grow corn in 
the interior of the body, and make 
bread by a special apparatus in the 
digestive organs. They must, in 
short, have the creature transformed 
into a Creator. 

Natural Law : " Environment." 



184 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

©rtbofcojs* 

It is more necessary for us to be 
active than to be orthodox. To be 
orthodox is what we wish to be, but 
we can only truly reach it by being 
honest, by being original, by seeing 
with our own eyes, by believing with 
our own heart. 

Natural Law : " Parasitism." 

©tber^Worl&Uness* 

The exclusiveness of Christianity, 
separation from the world, uncom- 
promising allegiance to the Kingdom 
of God, entire surrender of body, soul, 
and spirit to Christ, — these are truths 
which rise into prominence from time 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 185 

to time, become the watchword of 
insignificant parties, rouse the Church 
to attention and the world to opposi- 
tion, and die down ultimately for 
want of lives to live them. The few 
enthusiasts who distinguish in these 
requirements the essential conditions 
of entrance into the Kingdom of 
Christ are overpowered by the weight 
of numbers, who see nothing more in 
Christianity than a mild religious- 
ness, and who demand nothing more 
in themselves or in their fellow-Chris- 
tians than the participation in a con- 
ventional worship, the acceptance of 
traditional beliefs, and the living of 
an honest life. Yet nothing is more 
certain than that the enthusiasts are 



1 86 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

right. Any impartial survey — such 
as the unique analysis in Ecce Homo 
— of the claims of Christ and of the 
nature of His society will convince 
any one who cares to make the in- 
quiry of the outstanding difference 
between the system of Christianity in 
the original contemplation and its 
representations in modern life. 

Natural Law : " Classification." 

» 

Christianity marks the advent of 
what is simply a New Kingdom. Its 
distinctions from the Kingdom below 
it are fundamental. It demands from 
its members activities and responses 
of an altogether novel order. It is, 
in the conception of its Founder, a 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 187 

Kingdom for which all its adherents 
must henceforth exclusively live and 
work, and which opens its gates alone 
upon those who, having counted the 
cost, are prepared to follow it, if need 
be to the death. The surrender 
Christ demanded was absolute. Every 
aspirant for membership must seek 
first the Kingdom of God. 

Natural Law : " Classification." 



©ut of place* 

It is not worth seeking the king- 
dom of God unless we seek it first. 
Suppose you take the helm out of a 
ship and hang it over the bow, and 
send that ship to sea — will it ever 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 



reach the other side ? Certainly not. 
It will drift about anyhow. Keep 
religion in its place, and it will take 
you straight through life, and straight 
to your Father in heaven when life is 
over. But if you do not put it in its 
place, you may just as well have noth- 
ing to do with it. Religion out of its 
place in a human life is the most mis- 
erable thing in the world. 

"First!" 

parable. 

The place of parable in teaching, 
and especially after the sanction of 
the greatest of Teachers, must always 
be recognized. The very necessities of 
language, indeed, demand this method 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 189 

of presenting truth. The temporal is 
the husk and framework of the eter- 
nal, and thoughts can be uttered only 
through things. 

Natural Law : " Introduction." 



parasitism* 

So far from ministering to growth, 
parasitism ministers to decay. So far 
from ministering to holiness — that is 
to wholeness — parasitism ministers to 
exactly the opposite. One by one the 
spiritual faculties droop and die ; one 
by one, from lack of exercise, the mus- 
cles of the soul grow weak and flac- 
cid ; one by one the moral activities 
cease. So from him that hath not is 



190 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

taken away that which he hath, and 
after a few years of parasitism there 
is nothing left to save. 

Natural Law : " Parasitism." 

XTbe past 

Think of it ! the past is not only 
focussed there, in a man's soul : it is 
there. All things -that he has ever 
seen, known, felt, believed, of the 
surrounding world are now within 
him, have become part of him, in 
part are him ; he has been changed 
into their image. He may deny it, 
he may resent it, but they are there. 
They do not adhere to him, they are 
transfused through him. He cannot 
alter or rub them out. They are not 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 191 

in his memory : they are in him. 
His soul is as they have filled it, 
made it, left it. 

The Changed Life. 

perfect Xff e, 

PERFECT life is not merely the pos- 
sessing of perfect functions, but of 
perfect functions perfectly adjusted 
to each other, and all conspiring to 
a single result, the perfect working 
of the whole organism. 

Natural Law : " Growth." 

perfection. 

Patience, kindness, generosity, 
humility, courtesy, unselfishness, 
good-temper, guilessness, sincerity, 



192 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

— these make up the supreme gift, 
the stature of the perfect man. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 

personality 

If events change men, much more 
persons. No man can meet another 
on the street without making some 
mark upon him. We say we ex- 
change words when we meet; what 
we exchange is souls. And when 
intercourse is very close and very 
frequent, so complete is this exchange 
that recognizable bits of the one soul 
begin to show in the other's nature, 
and the second is conscious of a 
similar and growing debt to the 
first. 

The Changed Life. 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 1 93 

personality of Gbrist 

Of course there is a sense, and 
a very wonderful sense, in which a 
Great Personality breathes upon all 
who come within its influence an 
abiding peace and trust. Men can 
be to other men as the shadow of 
a great rock in a thirsty land. Much 
more Christ; much more Christ as 
Perfect Man; much more still as 
Saviour of the world. 

Pax Vo bis cum. 

pbenomena : Ubeir TOnttg* 

That the Phenomena of the Spirit- 
ual World are in analogy with the 
Phenomena of the Natural World re- 
quires no restatement. Since Plato 

13 



194 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

enunciated his doctrine of the Cave 
or of the twice-divided line ; since 
Christ spake in parables ; since Plo- 
tinus wrote of the world as an imaged 
image ; since the mysticism of Swe- 
denborg ; since Bacon and Pascal ; 
since 4 ' Sartor Resartus ' ' and 4 i In 
Memoriam," — it has been all but a 
commonplace with thinkers that 4 ' the 
invisible things of God from the crea- 
tion of the world are clearly seen, be- 
ing understood by the things that are 
made. ' ' Milton' s question — 

" What if earth 
Be but the shadow of heaven, and things therein 
Each to other like more than on earth is thought ?" 

is now superfluous. 

Natural Law .* " Introduction." 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 1 95 

IPbrases* 

I do not think we ourselves are 
aware how much our religious life is 
made up of phrases; how much of 
what we call Christian experience is 
only a dialect of the Churches, a 
mere religious phraseology, with 
almost nothing behind it in what 
we really feel and know. 

Pax Vo bis cum. 

flMeasure^iving* 

There is a difference between try- 
ing to please and giving pleasure. 
Give pleasure. I,ose no chance of 
giving pleasure. For that is the 



196 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

ceaseless and anonymous triumph of 
a truly loving spirit. 

The Greatest Thing in the World* 

Man as a rational and moral being 
demands a pledge that if he depends 
on Nature for any given result, on 
the ground that Nature has previously 
led him to expect such a result, his 
intellect shall not be insulted nor his 
confidence in her abused. If he is to 
trust Nature, in short, it must be 
guaranteed to him that in doing so 
he will " never be put to confusion." 

Natural Law: " Introduction." 



MY POINT OF VIEW. I97 

poetry 

True poetry is only science in 
another form. And long before it 
was possible for religion to give scien- 
tific expression to its greatest truths, 
men of insight uttered themselves in 
psalms which could not have been 
truer to Nature had the most modern 
light controlled the inspiration. 

Natural Law : " Environment.' ' 

practical IRelfgion* 

LET me remind you that theology 
is the most abstruse thing in the 
world, but that practical religion is 
the simplest thing. If any of you 
want to know how to begin to be 



198 MY POINT OF VIKW. 

a Christian, all I can say is that you 
should begin to do the next thing 
you find to be done as Christ would 
have done it. 

What is a Christian ? 

practice* 

What makes a man a good crick- 
eter ? Practice. What makes a man 
a good artist, a good sculptor, a good 
musician ? Practice. What makes a 
man a good linguist, a good stenog- 
rapher? Practice. What makes a 
man a good man? Practice. Noth- 
ing else. There is nothing capricious 
about religion. We do not get the 
soul in different ways, under different 
laws, from those in which we get the 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 1 99 

body and the mind. If a man does 
not exercise his arm, he develops no 
biceps muscle; and if a man does not 
exercise his soul, he acquires no muscle 
in his soul, no strength of character, 
no vigor of moral fire, nor beauty of 
spiritual growth. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 

prater* 

Will the evolutionist who admits 
the regeneration of the frog under the 
modifying influence of a continued 
correspondence with a new environ- 
ment care to question the possibility 
of the soul acquiring such a faculty 
as that of Prayer, the marvellous 
breathing- function of the new creature, 



200 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

when in contact with the atmosphere 
of a besetting God ? Is the change 
from the earthly to the heavenly more 
mysterious than the change from the 
aquatic to the terrestrial mode of 
life? 

Natural Law : " Eternal Life." 

prater a Symbol* 

What a very strange thing, is it 
not, for man to pray ? It is the symbol 
at once of his littleness and of his 
greatness. Here the sense of imper- 
fection, controlled and silenced in the 
narrower reaches of his being, be- 
comes audible. Now he must utter 
himself. The sense of need is so real, 
and the sense of Environment, that he 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 201 

calls out to it, addressing it articu- 
lately and imploring it to satisfy his 
need. Surely there is nothing more 
touching in Nature than this ! Man 
could never so expose himself, so break 
through all constraint, except from a 
dire necessity. 

Natural Law : " Environment." 

prigs. 

Some one defines a prig as u a 
creature that is overfed for its size. ' ' 
One sometimes finds Christians of this 
species — overfed on one side of their 
nature, but dismally thin and starved 
looking on the other. 

The Changed Life. 



20Z MY POINT OF VIEW. 

problems* 

The problems of the heart and con- 
science are infinitely more perplexing 
than those of the intellect. Has love 
no future? Has right no triumph? 
Is the unfinished self to remain un- 
finished ? Again, the alternatives are 
two — Christianity or Pessimism. But 
when we ascend the further height of 
the religious nature the crisis comes. 
There, without Environment, the 
darkness is unutterable; So madden- 
ing now becomes the mystery that 
men are compelled to construct an 
Environment for themselves. No 
Environment here is unthinkable. 
An altar of some sort men must have 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 203 

— God, or Nature, or Law. But the 
anguish of Atheism is only a negative 
proof of man's incompleteness. 

Natural Law :" Environment.' ' 

problems are IRecessarp* 

I would not rob a man of his 
problems, nor would I have another 
man rob me of my problems. They 
are the delight of life, and the'whole 
intellectual world would be stale and 
unprofitable if we knew everything. 

How to Learn How. 

proportion* 

A man may take a dollar or a half- 
dollar and hold it to his eye so closely 
that he will hide the sun from him. 



204 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

Or lie may so focus his telescope that 
a fly or a boulder may be as large as 
a mountain. A man may hold a 
certain doctrine very intensely — a 
doctrine which has been looming 
upon his horizon for the last six 
months, let us say, and which has 
thrown everything else out of pro- 
portion, it has become so big itself. 
Now, let us beware of distortion in 
the arrangement of the religious 
truths which we hold. 

How to Learn How. 

IPunisbment 

Thk punishment of sin is insepar- 
ably bound up with itself. 

Natural Law : " Mortification." 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 205 

putting ©ff an& putting ©m 

Escape means nothing more than 
the gradual emergence of the higher 
being from the lower, and nothing 
less. It means the gradual putting 
off of all that cannot enter the higher 
state, or heaven, and simultaneously 
the putting on of Christ. It involves 
the slow completing of the soul and 
the development of the capacity for 
God. 

Natural Law : " Degeneration." 

(Siuantitp an& <5iualit£. 

It is an open secret, to be read in 
a hundred analogies from the world 
around, that of the millions of possi- 



2o6 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

ble entrants for advancement in any 
department of Nature the number 
ultimately selected for preferment is 
small. Here also c ' many are called 
and few are chosen. " The analogies 
from the waste of seed, of pollen, of 
human lives, are too familiar to be 
quoted. In certain details, possibly, 
these comparisons are inappropriate. 
But there are other analogies, wider 
and more just, which strike deeper 
into the system of Nature. A com- 
prehensive view of the whole field of 
Nature discloses the feet that the cir- 
cle of the chosen slowly contracts as 
we rise in the scale of being. Some 
mineral, but not all, becomes vege- 
table ; some vegetable, but not all, be- 



MY POINT OK VIEW. 207 

comes animal ; some animal, but not 
all, becomes human ; some human, 
but not all, becomes Divine. Thus 
the area narrows. At the base is the 
mineral, most broad and simple ; the 
spiritual at the apex, smallest, but. 
most highly differentiated. So form 
rises above form, Kingdom above 
Kingdom. Quantity decreases as 
quality increases. 

Natural Law : " Classification." 

Quarrels* 

If you want to get the kingdom of 
God into your workshop or into your 
home, let the quarrelling be stopped. 
Ivive in peace and harmony and broth- 
erliness with every one. For the 



208 MY POINT OF VIKW. 

kingdom of God is a kingdom of 
brothers. It is a great society, found- 
ed by Jesus Christ, of all the people 
who try to be like Him, and live to 
make the world better and sweeter 
and happier. 

"First!" 



^UeStlOttS, 

The only legitimate questions one 
dare put to Nature are those which 
concern universal human good and 
the Divine interpretation of things. 
These I conceive may be there actu- 
ally studied at first-hand, and before 
their purity is soiled by human touch. 
We have Truth in Nature as it came 
from God. And it has to be read 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 209 

with the same unbiassed mind, the 
same open eye, the same faith, and 
the same reverence as all other Reve- 
lation. All that is found there, what- 
ever its place in Theology, whatever 
its orthodoxy or heterodoxy, whatever 
its narrowness or its breadth, we are 
bound to accept as Doctrine from 
which on the lines of Science there 
is no escape. 

Natural Law : " Introduction." 

CJuicfcest 1Roa&* 

If a man could make himself hum- 
ble to order, it might simplify mat- 
ters ; but we do not find that this 
happens. Hence we must all go 
through the mill. Hence death, 

14 



2IO MY POINT OF VIEW. 

death to the lower self, is the nearest 
gate and the quickest road to life. 

Pax Vobiscum. 

Quietism, 

If God is adding to our spiritual 
stature, unfolding the new nature 
within us, it is a mistake to keep 
twitching at the petals with our 
coarse fingers. We must seek to let 
the Creative Hand alone. 

Natural Law : " Growth." 



IReason an& ©be&ience* 

There are two organs of know- 
ledge — the one Reason, the other 
Obedience. Begin to obey Christ, 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 211 

and, doing His will, you shall know 
of the doctrine whether it be of God. 

How to Learn How. 

IRefcemption, 

Out of the infinite complexity there 
rises an infinite simplicity, the fore- 
shadowing of a final unity of that 

" One God, one law, one element, 
And one far-off divine event, 
To which the whole creation moves." * 

This is the final triumph of Con- 
tinuity, the heart secret of Creation, 
the unspoken prophecy of Chris- 
tianity. To Science, defining it as 
a working principle, this mighty pro- 
cess of amelioration is simply Evolu- 

* " In Memoriam." 



212 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

Hon. To Christianity, discerning the 
end through the means, it is Redemp- 
tion. These silent and patient pro- 
cesses, elaborating, eliminating, de- 
veloping all from the first of time, 
conducting the evolution from millen- 
nium to millennium with nnaltering 
purpose and unfaltering power, are 
the early stages in the redemptive 
work — the nnseen approach of that 
Kingdom whose strange mark is that 
it i i cometh without observation. ' ' 
And these Kingdoms, rising tier 
above tier in ever-increasing sublim- 
ity and beauty, their foundations vis- 
ibly fixed in the past, their progress, 
and the direction of their progress, 
being facts in Nature still, are the 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 213 

signs which, since the Magi saw His 
star in the East, have never been 
wanting from the firmament of truth, 
and which in every age, with grow- 
ing clearness to the wise and with 
ever-gathering mystery to the unin- 
itiated, proclaim that " the Kingdom 
of God is at hand." 

Natural Law : "Classification." 



IReflection, 

In looking at a mirror one does not 
see the mirror or think of it, but only 
of what it reflects. For a mirror 
never calls attention to itself except 
when there are flaws in it. 

The Changed Life. 



214 MY POINT OF VIKW. 

IRegeneratioru 

A FKW raw, unspiritual, uninspir- 
ing, men were admitted to the inner 
circle of His friendship. The change 
began at once. Day by day we can 
almost see the first disciples grow. 
First there steals over them the faint- 
est possible adumbration of His cha- 
racter, and occasionally, very occa- 
sionally, they do a thing or say a 
thing that they could not have done 
or said had they not been living there. 
Slowly the spell of His life deepens. 
Reach after reach of their nature is 
overtaken, thawed, subjugated, sanc- 
tified. Their manners soften, their 
words become more gentle, their con- 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 215 

duct more unselfish. As swallows 
who have found a summer, as frozen 
buds the spring, their starved human- 
ity bursts into a fuller life. They do 
not know how it is, but they are dif- 
ferent men. One day they find them- 
selves like their Master, going about 
and doing good. To themselves it is 
unaccountable, but they cannot do 
otherwise. They were not told to do 
it, it came to them to do it. But the 
people who watch them know well 
how to account for it — "They have 
been," they whisper, u with Jesus. n 
Already, even, the mark and seal of 
His character is upon them — "They 
have been with Jesus." Unparalleled 
phenomenon, that these poor fishermen 



2l6 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

should remind other men of Christ ! 
Stupendous victory and mystery of 
regeneration, that mortal men should 
suggest to the world God! 

The Changed Life. 

IRegeneratfon a 2>ifficult£* 

Regeneration has not merely 
been an outstanding difficulty, but 
an overwhelming obscurity. Even 
to earnest minds the difficulty of 
grasping the truth at all has always 
proved extreme. Philosophically one 
scarcely sees either the necessity or 
the possibility of being born again. 
Why a virtuous man should not sim- 
ply grow better and better until in 
his own right he enter the Kingdom 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 217 

of God is what thousands honestly- 
arid seriously fail to understand. Now 
philosophy cannot help us here. Her 
arguments are, if anything, against us. 
But Science answers to the appeal at 
once. If it be simply pointed out 
that this is the same absurdity as to 
ask why a stone should not grow more 
and more living till it enters the Or- 
ganic World, the point is clear in an 
instant. 

Natural Law: " Biogenesis." 



IReliQion ©pen to HIL 

Religion must ripen its fruits for 
every temperament, and the way even 
into its highest heights must be by 



2l8 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

a gateway through which the peoples 
of the world may pass. 

Pax Vobiscum. 



IReligion* 

Religion is not a strange or added 
thing, but the inspiration of the sec- 
ular life, the breathing of an eternal 
spirit through this temporal world. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 

denunciation* 

IT is not hard to give up our rights. 
They are often external. The dif- 
ficult thing is to give up ourselves. 
The more difficult thing still is not 
to seek things for ourselves. After 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 2ig 

we have sought them, bought them, 
won them, deserved them, we have 
taken the cream off them for our- 
selves already. 

The Greatest Thing in the World, 

1Rest : 1bow (Sainefc* 

When Christ said He would give 
men Rest He meant simply that He 
would put them in the way of it. 
By no act of conveyance would or 
could He make over His own Rest 
to them. He could give them His 
receipt for it. That was all. But 
He would not make it for them; for 
one thing, it was not in His plan to 
make it for them; for another thing, 
men were not so planned that it could 



220 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

be made for them ; and for yet another 
thing, it was a thousand times better 
that they should make it for them- 
selves. 

Pax Vobiscum. 

1Rest tbrougb Work* 

u L,EArn of Me," He says, u and 
ye shall find rest to your souls." 
Now, consider the extraordinary orig- 
inality of this utterance. How novel 
the connection between these two 
words ' c Iyearn ' ' and ' i Rest ' ' ! How 
few of us have ever associated them — 
ever thought that Rest was a thing 
to be learned; ever laid ourselves out 
for it as we would to learn a language; 
ever practised it as we would practise 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 221 

the violin! Does it not show how 
entirely new Christ's teaching still 
is to the world, that so old and thread- 
bare an aphorism should still be so 
little applied ? The last thing most of 
us would have thought of would have 
been to associate Rest with Work. 

Pax Vobiscum. 

IResults* 

If a housekeeper turns out a good 
cake, it is the result of a sound receipt 
carefully applied. She cannot mix 
the assigned ingredients and fire 
them for the appropriate time with- 
out producing the result. It is not 
she who has made the cake ; it is 
Nature. She brings related things 



222 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

together ; sets causes at work ; these 
causes bring about the result. She 
is not a creator, but an intermediary. 
She does not expect random causes 
to produce specific effects — random in- 
gredients would only produce ran- 
dom cakes. So it is in the making 
of Christian experiences. Certain 
lines are followed ; certain effects are 
the result. These effects cannot but 
be the result. But the result can 
never take place without the previous 
cause. To expect results without 
antecedents is to expect cakes with- 
out ingredients. That impossibility 
is precisely the almost universal ex- 
pectation. 

Pax Vobiscum. 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 223 

XTbe IResurrectforu 

On what does the Christian argu- 
ment for Immortality really rest ? It 
stands upon the pedestal on which the 
theologian rests the whole of histori- 
cal Christianity — the Resurrection of 
Jesus Christ. 

Natural Law : " Eternal Life." 



IRetritmtion* 

If it makes no impression on a man 
to know that God will visit his iniqui- 
ties upon him, he cannot blind him- 
self to the fact that Nature will. Do 
we not all know what it is to be pun- 
ished by Nature for disobeying her? 



224 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

We have looked round the wards of 
a hospital, a prison, or a madhouse, 
and seen there Nature at work squar- 
ing her accounts with sin. And we 
knew as we looked that if no Judge 
sat on the throne of heaven at all, 
there was a Judgment throne, where 
an inexorable Nature was crying 
aloud for justice, and carrying out 
her heavy sentences for violated laws. 

Natural Law : " Degeneration." 

TRetrospect 

As memory scans the past, above 
and beyond all the transitory pleas- 
ures of life there leap forward those 
supreme hours when you have been 
enabled to do unnoticed kindnesses 



MY POINT OE VIEW. 225 

to those round about you — things too 
trifling to speak about, but which you 
feel have entered into your eternal 
life. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 

IRevelation* 

Revelation never volunteers any- 
• thing that man could discover for 
himself — on the principle, probably, 
that it is only when he is capable of 
discovering it that he is capable of 
appreciating it. 

Natural Law : "Introduction. " 

IRevenge* 

Yesterday you got a certain letter. 
You sat down and wrote a reply which 

15 



226 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

almost scorched the paper. You 
picked the cruellest adjectives you 
knew, and sent it forth, without a 
pang, to do its ruthless work. You 
did that because your life was set in 
the wrong key. You began the day 
with the mirror placed at the wrong 
angle. To-morrow, at day-break, turn 
it toward Him, and even to your ene-* 
my the fashion of your countenance 
will be changed. Whatever you then 
do, one thing you will find you could 
not do — you could not write that let- 
ter. Your first impulse may be the 
same, your judgment may be un- 
changed, but if you try it the ink 
will dry on your pen, and you will 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 22J 

rise from your desk an unavenged, but 
a greater and more Christian man. 

How to Learn How. 

1Re\>ersion to U$pe* 

The law of Reversion to Type runs 
through all creation. If a man neglect 
himself for a few years, he will change 
into a worse man and a lower man. 
If it is his body that he neglects, he 
will deteriorate into a wild and bestial 
savage, like the de-humanized men 
who are discovered sometimes upon 
desert islands. If it is his mind, it 
will degenerate into imbecility and 
madness — solitary confinement has the 
power to unmake men's minds and 
leave them idiots. If he neglect his 



228 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

conscience, it will run off into law- 
lessness and vice. Or, lastly, if it is 
his soul, it must inevitably atrophy, 
drop off in ruin and decay. 

Natural Law : " Degeneration." 



IRigfeteousness* 

Righteousness, of course, is just 
doing what is right. Any boy who, 
instead of being quarrelsome, lives 
at peace with the other boys has the 
Kingdom of God within him. Any 
boy whose heart is filled with joy 
because he does what is right has 
the Kingdom of God within him. 

"First!" 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 229 

IRigbts, 

In Britain the Englishman is de- 
voted, and rightly, to his rights. But 
there come times when a man may- 
exercise even the higher right of 
giving up his rights. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 

Saltation* 

There is a natural principle in man 
lowering him, deadening him, pulling 
him down by inches to the mere ani- 
mal plane, blinding reason, searing 
conscience, paralyzing will. This is 
the active destroying principle, or Sin. 
Now, to counteract this, God has dis- 
covered to us another principle, which 



230 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

will stop this drifting process in the 
soul and make it drift the other way. 
This is the active saving principle, 
or Salvation. If a man finds the first 
of these powers furiously at work 
within him, dragging his whole life 
downward to destruction, there is only 
one way to escape his fate — to take 
resolute hold of the upward power, 
and be borne by it to the opposite 
pole. 

Natural Law : " Degeneration." 

Mark well the splendor of this 
idea of salvation. It is not merely 
final "safety," to be forgiven sin, to 
evade the curse. It is not, vaguely, 
"to get to heaven." It is to be con- 
formed to the Image of the Son. 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 23 1 

It is for these poor elements to attain 
to the Supreme Beauty. The organ- 
izing Life being Eternal, so must 
this Beauty be immortal. Its prog- 
ress toward the Immaculate is already 
guaranteed. And more than all, there 
is here fulfilled the sublimest of all 
prophecies; not Beauty alone, but 
Unity, is secured by the type — Unity 
of man and man, God and man, God 
and Christ and man, till l ' all shall 
be one." 

Natural Law : " Conformity to Type." 

Sanctiftcation, 

HERE the solution of the problem 
of sanctification is compressed into a 
sentence : Reflect the character of 



232 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

Christ, and you will become like 
Christ. 

The Changed Life. 

Scepticism* 

IT is the want of the discerning 
faculty, the clairvoyant power of see- 
ing the eternal in the temporal, rather 
than the failure of the reason, that 
begets the sceptic. 

Natural Laiv : " Introduction.' ' 

Science ant) 2>oubt 

It is recognized by all that the 
younger and abler minds of this age 
find the most serious difficulty in ac- 
cepting or retaining the ordinary 
forms or belief. Especially is this 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 233 

true of those whose culture is scien- 
tific. And the reason is palpable. 
No man can study modern Science 
without a change coming over his 
view of truth. What impresses him 
about Nature is its solidity. He is 
there standing upon actual things, 
among fixed laws. And the integrity 
of the scientific method so seizes him 
that all other forms of truth begin 
to appear comparatively unstable. 
He did not know before that any 
form of truth could so hold him, and 
the immediate effect is to lessen his 
interest in all that stands on other 
bases. This he feels in spite of him- 
self; he struggles against it in vain, 
and he finds, perhaps to his alarm, 



234 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

that he is drifting fast into what looks 
at first like pure Positivism. 

Natural Law : " Preface." 



Science anfc ffaitb* 

IT is quite erroneous to suppose 
that Science ever overthrows Faith, 
if by that is implied that any natural 
truth can oppose successfully any sin- 
gle spiritual truth. Science cannot 
overthrow Faith ; but it shakes it. 
Its own doctrines, grounded in Na- 
ture, are so certain that the truths of 
Religion, resting to most men on 
Authority, are felt to be strangely 
insecure. The difficulty, therefore, 
which men of Science feel about Re- 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 235 

ligion is real and inevitable, and in 
so far as Doubt is a conscientious 
tribute to the inviolability of Nature 
it is entitled to respect. 

Natural Law : " Preface." 



Science an Eifc to f aitb. 

The belief in Science as an aid to 
faith is not yet ripe enough to war- 
rant men in searching there for 
witnesses to the highest Christian 
truths. The inspiration of Nature, it 
is thought, extends to the humbler 
doctrines alone. And yet the rever- 
ent inquirer who guides his steps in 
the right direction may find even now 
in the still dim twilight of the scien- 



2$6 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

tific world much that will illuminate 
and intensify his sublimest faith. 

Natural Law : " Eternal Life." 

Science ant) IRelfgion* 

No man who knows the splendor 
of scientific achievement or cares for 
it, no man who feels the solidity of 
its method or works with it, can re- 
main neutral with regard to Religion. 
He must either extend his method 
into it, or, if that is impossible, op- 
pose it to the knife. On the other 
hand, no one who knows the content 
of Christianity or feels the universal 
need of a Religion can stand idly by 
while the intellect of his age is slowly 
divorcing itself from it. What is 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 237 

required, therefore, to draw Science 
and Religion together again — for they 
began the centuries hand in hand — 
is the disclosure of the naturalness 
of the supernatural. Then, and not 
till then, will men see how true it is 
that to be loyal to all of Nature they 
must be loyal to the part defined as 
Spiritual. 

Natural Law : " Preface." 

Science : Its Bnalogf es. 

Science speaks to us indeed of 
much more than numbers of years. 
It defines degrees of Life. It explains 
a widening Environment. It unfolds 
the relation between a widening En- 
vironment and increasing complexity 



238 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

in organisms. And if it has no abso- 
lute contribution to the content of 
Religion, its analogies are not limited 
to a point. It yields to Immortality 
— and this is the most that Science 
can do in any case — the broad frame- 
work for a doctrine. 

Natural Law : " Eternal Life." 

Science anfc> tbe Supernatural* 

No science contributes to another 
without receiving a reciprocal benefit. 
And even as the contribution of Sci- 
ence to Religion is the vindication of 
the naturalness of the Supernatural, 
so the gift of Religion to Science is 
the demonstration of the supernatural- 
ness of the Natural. Thus, as the 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 239 

Supernatural becomes slowly Natural, 
will also the Natural become slowly 
Supernatural, until in the impersonal 
authority of L,aw men everywhere rec- 
ognize the Authority of God. 

Natural Law : " Preface." 

Scientific fact 

No single fact in Science has ever 
discredited a fact in Religion. 

Natural Law : " Introduction. " 

Scientific ZheolOQy. 

Can we shut our eyes to the fact 
that the religious opinions of man- 
kind are in a state of flux? And 
when we regard the uncertainty of 
current beliefs, the war of creeds, the 



240 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

havoc of inevitable as well as of idle 
doubt, the reluctant abandonment of 
early faith by those who would cherish 
it longer if they could, is it not plain 
that the one thing thinking men are 
waiting for is the introduction of Law 
among the Phenomena of the Spirit- 
ual World? When that comes we 
shall offer to such men a truly scien- 
tific theology. And the Reign of 
L,aw will transform the whole Spirit- 
ual World as it has already trans- 
formed the Natural World. 

Natural Law : " Preface." 

Self^DeniaL 

No man is called to a life of self- 
denial for its own sake. It is in order 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 241 

to a compensation which, though 
sometimes difficult to see, is always 
real and always proportionate. No 
truth, perhaps, in practical religion 
is more lost sight of. We cherish 
somehow a lingering rebellion against 
the doctrine of self-denial — as if our 
nature or our circumstances or our 
conscience dealt with us severely in 
loading us with the daily cross. But 
is it not plain, after all, that the life 
of self-denial is the more abundant 
life — more abundant just in propor- 
tion to the ampler crucifixion of the 
narrower life ? Is it not a clear case 
of exchange — an exchange, however, 
where the advantage is entirely on 
our side ? We give up a correspond- 

16 



242 MY POINT OF VIKW. 

ence in which there is a little life to 
enjoy a correspondence in which there 
is an abundant life. What though we 
sacrifice a hundred such correspond- 
ences ? We make but the more room 
for the great one that' is left. 

Natural Law : " Mortification." 

Selfishness* 

Obviously, if the mind turns away 
from one part of the environment, it 
will only do so under some tempta- 
tion to correspond with another. 
This temptation, at bottom, can only 
come from one source — the love of 
self. The irreligious man's corre- 
spondences are concentrated upon 
himself. He worships himself. Self- 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 243 

gratification rather than self-denial; 
independence rather than submission, 
— these are the rules of life. And 
this is at once the poorest and the 
commonest form of idolatry. 

Natural Law : " Death." 

Self-effacement* 

After you have been kind, after 
Love has stolen forth into the world 
and done its beautiful work, go back 
into the shade again and say nothing 
about it. Love hides even from itself. 
Love waives even self-satisfaction. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 

QelUsuTRcicncv. 

In mid- Atlantic, the other day, the 
"Etruria," in .which I was sailing, 



244 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

suddenly stopped. Something had 
gone wrong with the engines. There 
were five hundred able-bodied men 
on board the ship. Do you think 
if we had gathered together and 
pushed against the mast we could 
have pushed it on? When one at- 
tempts to sanctify himself by effort, 
he is trying to make his boat go by 
pushing against the mast. He is like 
a drowning man trying to lift himself 
out of the water by pulling at the 
hair of his own head. Christ held 
up this method almost to ridicule 
when He said, " Which of you by 
taking thought can add a cubit to 
his stature?" The one redeeming 
feature of the self-sufficient method 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 245 

is this — that those who try it find 
out almost at once that it will not 
gain the goal. 

The Changed Life. 

Sense an& SouL 

The Life of the senses, high and 
low, may perfect itself in Nature. 
Even the Life of thought may find 
a large complement in surrounding 
things. But the higher thought and 
the conscience and the religious Life 
can only perfect themselves in God. 

Natural Law : " Environment." 

Sequences* 

Causes and effects are eternal ar- 
rangements, set in the constitution of 



246 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

the world, fixed beyond man's order- 
ing. What man can do is to place 
himself in the midst of a chain of 
sequences. 

Pax Vobiscum. 

Sigbt 

There is, for example, a Sense of 
Sight in the religious nature. Neg- 
lect this, leave it undeveloped, and 
you never miss it. You simply see 
nothing. But develop it and you see 
God. 

Natural Law : " Degeneration." 

Simplicity 

The distressing incompetence of 
which most of us are conscious in 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 247 

trying to work out our spiritual ex- 
perience is due, perhaps, less to the 
diseased will which we commonly 
blame for it than to imperfect know- 
ledge of the right conditions. It does 
not occur to us how natural the spirit- 
ual is. We still strive for some 
strange transcendent thing*, we seek 
to promote life by methods as unnat- 
ural as they prove unsuccessful ; and 
only the utter incomprehensibility of 
the whole region prevents us seeing 
fully — what we already half suspect — 
how completely we are missing the 
road. Living in the spiritual world, 
nevertheless, is just as simple as liv- 
ing in the natural world; and 'it is the 
same kind of simplicity. It is the 



248 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

same kind of simplicity, for it is the 
same kind of world — there are not 
two kinds of worlds. The conditions 
of life in the one are the conditions 
of life in the other. And till these 
conditions are sensibly grasped as the 
conditions of all life it is impossible 
that the personal effort after the high- 
est life shonld be other than a blind 
struggle carried on in fruitless sorrow 
and humiliation. 

Natural Law : " Environment." 

Sin an& H>eatb* 

If sin is estrangement from God, 
this very estrangement is Death. It 
is a want of correspondence. If. Sin 
is selfishness, it is conducted at the 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 249 

expense of life. Its wages are Death 
— "He that loveth his life," said 
Christ, " shall lose it" 

Natural Law: "Death." 

Sin anfc IfoelL 

When we find it stated that "the 
wages of sin is death," we are in the 
heart of the profoundest questions of 
theology. What before was merely 
"enmity against society" becomes 
" enmity against God;" and what was 
4 1 vice " is " sin. ' ' The conception of 
a God gives an altogether new color 
to worldliness and vice. Worldliness 
it changes into heathenism, vice into 
blasphemy. The carnal mind, the 
mind which is turned away from God, 



250 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

which will not correspond with God, 
— this is not moral only, but spiritual 
death. And Sin, that which separates 
from God, which disobeys God, which 
can not in that state correspond with 
God, — this is hell. 

Natural Law : " Death." 

%in is Bpostasp* 

To the estrangement of the soul 
from God the best of theology traces 
the ultimate cause of sin. Sin is 
simply apostasy from God, unbelief 
in God. 

Natural Law : " Death." 

Sin Mftbfn W8. 

The unforgiven sins are not away 
in keeping somewhere, to be let loose 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 25 1 

upon us wlien we die ; tliey are here, 
within us, now. To-day brings the 
resurrection of their past, to-morrow 
of to-day. And the powers of sin, 
to the exact strength that we have 
developed them, nearing their dread- 
ful culmination with every breath we 
draw, are here, within us, now. The 
souls of some men are already honey- 
combed through and through with 
the eternal consequences of neglect, 
so that taking the natural and rational 
view of their case just 7iow, it is sim- 
ply inconceivable that there is any 
escape just now. What a fearful 
thing it is to fall into the hands of 
the living God ! A fearful thing even 
if, as the philosopher tells us, "the 



252 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

hands of the Laving God are the L,aws 
of Nature." 

Natural Law : " Degeneration." 

Sins Classified 

There are two great classes of Sins 
— sins of the Body and sins of the 
Disposition. The Prodigal Son may 
be taken as a type of the first, the 
Elder Brother of the second. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 

Sincerity 

Sincerity of purpose endeavors to 
see things as they are, and rejoices to 
find them better than suspicion feared 
or calumny denounced. 

The. Greatest Thing in the World. 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 253 

QliQhts. 

There are people who go about 
the world looking out for slights, and 
they are necessarily miserable, for 
they find them at every turn — es- 
pecially the imaginary ones. One 
has the same pity for such men as 
for the very poor. They are the mor- 
ally illiterate. They have had no 
real education, for they have never 
learned how to live. 

Pax Vobisaim. 

Slowness* 

All thorough work is slow, all true 
development by minute, slight, and 
insensible metamorphoses. The high- 



254 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

er the structure, moreover, the slower 
the progress. 

The Changed Life. 

SolDters, 

IT is for active service soldiers are 
drilled and trained and fed and armed. 
That is why you and I are in the 
world at all — not to prepare to go out 
of it some day, but to serve God ac- 
tively in it now. It is monstrous 
and shameful and cowardly to talk 
of seeking the kingdom last. It is 
shirking duty, abandoning one's right- 
ful post, playing into the enemy's 
hand by doing nothing to turn his 

flank. 

"First!" 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 255 

XTbe Soul anb tbe %«£♦ 

We are most unspiritual always in 
dealing with the simplest spiritual 
things. A lily grows mysteriously, 
pushing up its solid weight of stem 
and leaf in the teeth of gravity. 
Shaped into beauty by secret and in- 
visible fingers, the flower develops we 
know not how. But we do not won- 
der at it. Every day the thing is 
done ; it is Nature, it is God. We 
are spiritual enough at least to under- 
stand that. But when the soul rises 
slowly above the world, pushing up 
its delicate virtues in the teeth of 
sin, shaping itself mysteriously into 
the image of Christ, we deny that the 



256 MY POINT OF VIKW. 

power is not of man. A strong will, 
we say, a high ideal, the reward of 
virtue, Christian influence, — these 
will account for it. Spiritual charac- 
ter is merely the product of anxious 
work, self-command, and self-denial. 
We allow, that is to say, a miracle to 
the lily, but none to the man. The 
lily may grow ; the man must fret 
and toil and spin. 

Natural Law : " Growth." 



Zhc SouL 

Just as in an organism we have 
these three things — formative matter, 
formed matter, and the forming prin- 
ciple or life, so in the soul we have 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 257 

the old nature, the renewed nature, 
and the transforming Life. 

Natural Law : " Conformity to Type/' 

TLhc Soul anb <5o&* 

The soul, in its highest sense, is a 
vast capacity for God. It is like a 
curious chamber added on to being, 
and somehow involving being — a 
chamber with elastic and contractile 
walls, which can be expanded, with 
God as its guest, inimitably, but 
which without God shrinks and shriv- 
els until every vestige of the Divine 
is gone, and God's image is left with- 
out God's Spirit. One cannot call 
what is left a soul ; it is a shrunken, 

useless organ, a capacity sentenced to 
17 



258 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

death by disuse, which droops as a 
withered hand by the side, and cum- 
bers nature like a rotted branch. Na- 
ture has her revenge upon neglect as 
well as upon extravagance. Misuse, 
with her, is as mortal a sin as abuse. 

Natural Law : " Degeneration.' ' 

SouI*1bunger* 

The protoplasm in man has a some- 
thing in addition to its instincts or its 
habits. It has a capacity for God. In 
this capacity for God lies its recep- 
tivity; it is the very protoplasm that 
was necessary. The chamber is not 
only ready to receive the new Life, 
but the Guest is expected, and, till 
He comes, is missed. Till then the 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 259 

soul longs and yearns, wastes and 
pines, waving its tentacles piteously 
in the empty air, feeling after God if 
so be that it may find Him. This is 
not peculiar to the protoplasm of the 
Christian's soul. In every land and 
in every age there have been altars 
to the Known or Unknown God. It 
is now agreed as a mere question of 
anthropology that the universal lan- 
guage of the human soul has always 
been l ' I perish with hunger. ' ' This 
is what fits it for Christ. There is a 
grandeur in this cry from the depths 
which makes its very unhappiness 
sublime. 

Natural Law : " Conformity to Type." 



26o MY POINT OF VIKW. 

Source of %ifc. 

IT will be disputed by none that 
the Source of Life in the Spiritual 
World is God. And as the same law 
of Biogenesis prevails in both spheres, 
we may reason from the higher to the 
lower, and affirm it to be at least 
likely that the origin of life there 
has been the same. 

Natural Law : " Classification." 



Sources* 

A single combat with a special 
sin does not affect the root and spring 
of the disease. 

The Changed Life, 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 26l 

Spectacles* 

Many a man thinks he is looking 
at truth when he is only looking at 
the spectacles he has put on to see 
it with. He is looking at his own 
spectacles. 

How to Learn How, 



Spirit 

Friendship is a spiritual thing. 
It is independent of Matter or Space 
or Time. That which I love in my 
friend is not that which I see. What 
influences me in my friend is not his 
body, but his spirit. 

The Changed Life, 



262, MY POINT OF VIEW. 

Spiritual Xife tbe Basiest 

The well-defined spiritual life is 
not only the highest life, but it is 
also the most easily lived. The 
whole cross is more easily carried 
than the half. It is the man who 
tries to make the best of both worlds 
who makes nothing of either. And 
he who seeks to serve two masters 
misses the benediction of both. But 
he who has taken his stand, who has 
drawn a boundary-line sharp and deep 
about his religious life, who has 
marked off all beyond as for ever for- 
bidden ground to him, finds the yoke 
easy and the burden light. For this 
forbidden environment comes to be 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 263 

as if it were not. His faculties, fall- 
ing out of correspondence, slowly lose 
their sensibilities. And the balm of 
Death numbing his lower nature 
releases him for the scarce disturbed 
communion of a higher life. So even 
here to die is gain. 

Natural Law : "Mortification." 

Spiritual /IDan* 

Hk who lives the Spiritual Life has 
a distinct kind of Life added to all 
the other phases of Life which he 
manifests — a kind of Life infinitely 
more distinct than is the active Life 
of a plant from the inertia of a stone. 
The vSpiritual man is more distinct 
in point of fact than is the plant from 



264 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

the stone. This is the one possible 
comparison in Nature, for it is the 
widest distinction in Nature; but 
compared with the difference between 
the Natural and the Spiritual the 
gulf which divides the organic from 
the inorganic is a hair's-breadth. The 
natural man belongs essentially to 
this present order of things. He is 
endowed simply with a high quality 
of the natural animal Life. But it 
is Life of so poor a quality that it is 
not Life at all. He that hath not the 
Son hath not Life ; but he that hath 
the Son hath Life — a new and distinct 
and supernatural endowment. He 
is not of this world. He is of the 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 265 

timeless state, of Eternity. // doth 
not yet appear what he shall be. 

Natural Law : " Biogenesis." 

Spiritual Worto, 

The Spiritual World is not a castle 
in the air, of an architecture unknown 
to earth or heaven, but a fair, ordered 
realm furnished with many familiar 
things and ruled by well-remembered 
Laws. 

Natural Law : " Introduction.' ' 

Spirituality 

The test of spirituality is that 
you cannot tell whence it cometh or 
whither it goeth. If you can tell, 
if you can account for it on philo- 



266 MY POINT OF VIKW. 

sophical principles, on the doctrine 
of influence, on strength of will, on 
a favorable environment, it is not 
growth. It may be so far a success; 
it may be a perfectly honest, even 
remarkable and praiseworthy imita- 
tion, but it is not the real thing. The 
fruits are wax, the flowers artificial 
— you can tell whence it cometh and 
whither it goeth. 

Natural Law : " Growth." 

Stagnation* 

Two painters each painted a pict- 
ure to illustrate his conception of 
rest. The first chose for his scene a 
still, lone lake among the far-off 
mountains. The second threw on his 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 267 

canvas a thundering waterfall, with a 
fragile birch tree bending over the 
foam ; at the fork of a branch, almost 
wet with the cataract's spray, a robin 
sat on its nest. The first was only 
Stagnation; the last was Rest. For 
in Rest there are always two elements 
— tranquillity and energy ; silence and 
turbulence ; creation and destruction ; 
fearlessness and fearfulness. This it 
was in Christ. 

Pax Vobiscum. 

Stature* 

As the branch ascends, and the 
bud bursts, and the fruit reddens 
under the co-operation of influences 
from the outside air, so man rises 



268 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

to the higher stature under invisible 
pressures from without. 

The Changed Life. 

Submission* 

O PREPOSTEROUS and vain man, 
thou who couldest not make a finger- 
nail of thy body, thinkest thou to 
fashion this wonderful, mysterious, 
subtle soul of thine after the ineffable 
Image? Wilt thou ever permit thy- 
self to be conformed to the Image of 
the Son? Wilt thou, who canst not 
add a cubit to thy stature, submit to 
be raised by the Type-Life within 
thee to the perfect stature of Christ ? 

Natural 'Law : " Conformity to Type." 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 269 

Sweetening 

Souls are made sweet not by taking 
the acid fluids out, but by putting 
something in — a great Love, a new 
Spirit, the Spirit of Christ. 

The Greatest Thin* in the World. 



UeachinQ. 

Children do % not need Laws, ex- 
cept Laws in the sense of command- 
ments. They repose with simplicity 
on authority, and ask no questions. 
But there comes a time, as the world 
reaches its manhood, when they will 
ask questions, and stake, moreover, 
everything on the answers. That 



270 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

time is now. Hence we must exhibit 
our doctrines, not lying athwart the 
lines of the world's thinking, in a 
place reserved, and therefore shunned, 
for the Great Exception; but in their 
kinship to all truth and in their L,aw- 
relation to the whole of Nature. 
This is, indeed, simply following out 
the system of teaching begun by 
Christ Himself. And what is the 
search for Spiritual truth in the L,aws 
of Nature but an attempt to utter 
the parables which have been hid so 
long in the world around without a 
preacher, and to tell men once more 
that the Kingdom of Heaven is like 
unto this and to that? 

Natural Law : " Introduction." 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 2J I 

TTemper : fits ]£\>ils* 

No form of vice — not worldliness, 
not greed of gold, not drunkenness 
itself — does more to un-Christianize 
society than evil temper. For embit- 
tering life, for breaking up com- 
munities, for destroying the most 
sacred relationships, for devastating 
homes, for withering up men and 
women, for taking the bloom of 
childhood — in short, for sheer gratu- 
itous misery-producing power — this 
influence stands alone. 

The Greatest Thing in the World, 

{Temper : fits TRcvclation. 

Temper is significant. It is not 
in what it is alone, but in what it 



272 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

reveals. It is a test for love, a symp- 
tom, a revelation of an unloving 
nature at bottom. It is the inter- 
mittent fever which bespeaks uninter- 
mittent disease within; the occasional 
bubble escaping to the surface which 
betrays some rottenness underneath; 
a sample of the most hidden products 
of the soul dropped involuntarily 
when off one's guard; in a word, the 
lightning form of a hundred hideous 
and un-Christian sins. For a want of 
patience, a want of kindness, a want of 
generosity, a want of courtesy, a want 
of unselfishness, are all instantane- 
ously symbolized in one flash of 
Temper. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 273 

^Temperance* 

A rabid Temperance advocate is 
often the poorest of creatures, flour- 
ishing on a single virtue, and quite 
oblivious that his Temperance is 
making a worse man of him, and 
not a better. 

The Changed Life. 

^Temptation* 

Spiritual life is the sum total of 
the functions which resist sin. The 
soul's atmosphere is the daily trial, 
circumstance, and temptation of the 
world. And as it is life alone which 
gives the plant power to utilize the 
elements, and as, without it, they 

18 



274 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

destroy it, so it is the spiritual life 
alone which gives the soul power to 
utilize temptation and trial; and 
without it they destroy the soul. 
How shall we escape if we refuse to 
exercise these functions — in other 
words, if we neglect? 

Natural Law : " Degeneration.' ' 



TEbe IRew Testament 

Take the New Testament. There 
were four lives of Christ. One was 
in Rome ; one was in Southern Italy; 
one was in Palestine ; one in Asia 
Minor. There were twenty-one let- 
ters. Five were in Greece and Mace- 
donia ; five in Asia ; one in Rome ; 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 275 

the rest were in the pockets of private 
individuals. Theophilus had Acts. 
They were collected nndesignedly. 
For example, the letter to the Gala- 
tians was written to the Church in Ga- 
latia. Somebody would make a copy 
or two, and put it into the hands of 
the members of the different churches, 
and they would find their way not 
only to the churches in Galatia, but 
after an interval to nearly all the 
churches. In those days the Chris- 
tians scattered up and down through 
the world exchanged copies of those 
letters, very much as geologists up 
and down the world exchange speci- 
mens of minerals at the present time, 
or entomologists exchange specimens 



2"i 6 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

of butterflies. And after a long time 
a number of the books began to be 
pretty well known. In the third cen- 
tury the New Testament consisted of 
the following books : The four Gos- 
pels, Acts, thirteen letters of Paul, 
I. John, I. Peter, and, in addition, the 
Epistles of Barnabas and Hermas. 
This was not called the New Testa- 
ment, but the Christian Library. 
Then these last books were discarded. 
They ceased to be regarded as upon 
the same level as the others. In the 
fourth century the canon was closed 
— that is to say, a list was made up 
of the books which were to be regard- 
ed as canonical. And then, long after 
that, they were stitched together and 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 277 

made up into one book — hundreds of 
years after that. 

The Study of the Bible. 

TLheism. 

Theism is the easiest of all religions 
to get, but the most difficult to keep. 
Individuals have kept it, but nations 
never. Socrates and Aristotle, Cicero 
and Epictetus, had a theistic religion; 
Greece and Rome had none. And 
even after getting what seems like a 
firm place in the minds of men its un- 
stable equilibrium sooner or later be- 
trays itself. On the one hand, The- 
ism has always fallen into the wildest 
Polytheism, or, on the other, into the 
blankest Atheism. 

Natural Law : " Death." 



278 MY POINT OK VIKW. 

TTbeoloQical 2Laws* 

The greatest among the Theologi- 
cal Laws are the L,aws of Nature in 
disguise. It will be the splendid task 
of the Theology of the future to take 
off the mask and disclose to a wan- 
ing scepticism the naturalness of the 
supernatural. 

Natural Law: " Introduction. " 



Theologies* 

Theologies — and I am not speak- 
ing disrespectfully of theology ; theol- 
ogy is as scientific a thing as any 
other science of facts — but theologies 
are human versions of Divine truths, 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 279 

and hence the varieties of the ver- 
sions and the inconsistencies of them. 

How to Learn How. 

QbcolCQy) an& Science* 

One by one, slowly through the 
centuries, the Sciences have crystal- 
lized into geometrical form, each form 
not only perfect in itself, but perfect 
in its relation to all other forms. 
Many forms had to be perfected be- 
fore the form of the Spiritual. The 
Inorganic has to be worked out before 
the Organic, the Natural before the 
Spiritual. Theology at present has 
merely an ancient and provisional 
philosophic form. By and by it will 
be seen whether it be not susceptible 



28o MY POINT OF VIKW. 

of another. For Theology must pass 
through the necessary stages of prog- 
ress, like any other science. 

Natural Law ; " Introduction." 

ZMxiqs. 

U SKKKKST thou great things for 
thyself?" said the prophet. u Seek 
them noty Why? Because there 
is no greatness in things. Things 
cannot be great. The only greatness 
is unselfish love. 

The Greatest Thing in the World, 

XCbougbt anb Ectioru 

It is a good thing to think; it is 
a better thing to work. It is a better 
thing to do good. 

How to Learn How. 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 28l 

{Toleration* 

If we can carry away the mere 
lessons of toleration, and leave behind 
us our censoriousness, and criticalness, 
and harsh judgments upon one anoth- 
er, and excommunicating of every- 
body except those who think exactly 
as we do, the time we shall spend 
here will not be the least useful parts 
of our lives. 

How to Learn How. 

TToucbiness, 

Men harness themselves to the 
work and stress of the world in 
clumsy and unnatural ways. The 
harness they put on is antiquated. 



282 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

A rough, ill-fitted collar at the best, 
they make its strain and friction 
past enduring by placing it where 
the neck is most sensitive; and by 
mere continuous irritation this sensi- 
tiveness increases until the whole 
nature is quick and sore. This is 
the origin, among other things, of 
a disease called touchiness — a dis- 
ease which, in spite of its inno- 
cent name, is one of the gravest 
sources of restlessness in the world. 
Touchiness, when it becomes chronic, 
is a morbid condition of the inward 
disposition. It is self-love inflamed 
to the acute point; conceit with a hair- 
trigger. 

Pax Vobiscum. 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 283 

Transfiguration* 

I CONFESS that even when in the 
first dim vision the organizing hand 
of Law moved among the unordered 
truths of my Spiritual World, poor 
and scantily furnished as it was, there 
seemed to come over it the beauty of 
a transfiguration. The change was 
as great as from the old chaotic world 
of Pythagoras to the symmetrical and 
harmonious universe of Newton. 

Natural Law ; " Preface." 

trials. 

Great trials come at lengthened 
intervals, and we rise to breast them ; 
but it is the petty friction of our 



284 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

every-day life with one another — the 
jar of business or of work, the dis- 
cord of the domestic circle, the col- 
lapse of our ambition, the crossing 
of our will, or the taking down of 
our conceit — which makes inward 
peace impossible. 

Pax Vobiscum. 



TTrust 

To be trusted is to be saved. And 
if we try to influence or elevate others, 
we shall soon see that success is in 
proportion to their belief of our belief 
in them. For the respect of another 
is the first restoration of the self-re- 
spect a man has lost ; our ideal of 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 285 

what he is becomes to him the hope 
and pattern of what he may become. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 



Urutlx 

Hk who loves will love Truth not 
less than men. He will rejoice in the 
Truth — rejoice not in what he has 
been taught to believe ; not in this 
Church's doctrine or in that ; not in 
this ism or in that ism ; but ( ( in the 
Truth. ' ' He will accept only what is 
real; he will strive to get at facts; he 
will search for Truth with a humble 
and unbiassed mind, and cherish 
whatever he finds at any sacrifice. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 



286 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

Urutfo: 1bow jfounfc* 

The faculty of selecting truth at 
first hand and appropriating it for 
one's self is a lawful possession to 
every Christian. Rightly exercised 
it conveys to him truth in its freshest 
form ; it offers him the opportunity 
of verifying doctrines for himself ; it 
makes religion personal ; it deepens 
and intensifies the only convictions 
that are worth deepening — those, 
namely, which are honest ; and it 
supplies the mind with a basis of cer- 
tainty in religion. But if all one's 
truth is derived by imbibition from 
the Church, the faculties for receiving 
truth are not only undeveloped, but 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 287 

one's whole view of truth becomes 
distorted. He who abandons the per- 
sonal search for truth, under what- 
ever pretext, abandons truth. The 
very word truth, by becoming the 
limited possession of a guild, ceases 
to have any meaning ; and faith, 
which can only be founded on truth, 
gives way to credulity, resting on 
mere opinion. 

Natural Law : " Parasitism." 



XTrutb not a Birtbrigbt 

ThkrK is no more important lesson 
that we have to carry with us than 
that truth is not to be found in what 
I have been taught. That is not 



288 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

truth. Truth is not what I have been 
taught. If it were so, that would ap- 
ply to the Mormon, it would apply to 
the Brahman, it would apply to the 
Buddhist. Truth would be to every- 
body just what he had been taught. 
Therefore let us dismiss from our 
minds the predisposition to regard 
that which we have been brought up 
in as being necessarily the truth. I 
must say it is very hard to shake one's 
self free altogether from that. I sup- 
pose it is impossible. 

How to Learn How. 

Urutb Zesteb. 

The test of value of the different 
verities of truth depends upon one 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 289 

thing : whether they have or have 

not a sanctifying power. Christ said, 

u Sanctify them through Thy truth. 

Thy Word # is Truth. ' ' Now, the value 

of any question — the value of any 

theological question — depends upon 

whether it has a sanctifying influence. 

If it has not, don't bother about it. 

Don't let it disturb your minds until 

you have exhausted all truths that 

have sanctification within them. If 

a truth makes a man a better man, 

then let him focus his instrument 

upon it and get all the acquaintance 

with it he can. If it is the profane 

babbling of science, falsely so called, 

or anything that has an injurious 

effect upon the moral and spirit- 
19 



290 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

ual nature of a man, it is better let 
alone. 

Hoiv to Learn How. 



Uhc Wbole Urutb, 

I once heard of some blind men 
who were taken to see a menagerie. 
They had gone around the animals, 
and four of them were allowed to 
touch an elephant as they went past. 
They were discussing afterward what 
kind of a creature the elephant was. 
One man, who had touched its tail, 
said the elephant was like a rope. 
Another of the blind men, who had 
touched his hind limb, said, " No 
such thing ! the elephant is like the 
trunk of a tree. ' ' Another, who had 



MY POINT OF VIKW. 291 

felt its sides, said, "That is all rub- 
bish. An elephant is a thing like a 
wall." And the fourth, who had felt 
its ear, said that an elephant was like 
none of those things ; it was like a 
leather bag. Now, men look at truth 
at different bits of it, and they see dif- 
ferent things, of course, and they are 
very apt to imagine that the thing 
which they have seen is the whole 
affair — the whole thing. In reality, 
we can only see a very little bit at a 
time ; and we must, I think, learn to 
believe that other men can see bits of 
truth as well as ourselves. Your 
views are just what you see w T ith your 
own eyes ; and my views are just what 
I see ; and what I see depends on just 



292 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

where I stand, and what you see de- 
pends on just where you stand ; and 
truth is very much bigger than an 
elephant, and we are very much 
blinder than any of those blind men 
as we come to look at it. 

How to Learn How. 

Wnity. 

Character is a unity, and all the 
virtues must advance together to 
make the perfect man. 

The Changed Life. 

Ube Universal SLan^ua^e, 

You can take nothing greater to 
the heathen world than the impress 
and reflection of the Love of God 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 293 

upon your character. That is the 
universal language. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 

XTbe ZHnftnowable* 

The very confession of the Un- 
knowable is itself the dull recogni- 
tion of an Environment for which 
they feel they lack the correspond- 
ence. It is this want that makes 
their God the Unknown God. And 
it is this that makes them dead. 

Natural Law: "Death." 

THnrecogni3ableness, 

Is it hopeless to point out that one 
of the most recognizable character- 



294 MY POINT OF VIKW. 

istics of life is its unrecognizableness, 
and that the very token of its spiritual 
nature lies in its being beyond the 
grossness of our eyes? 

Natural Law : " Conformity to Type." 

Xttnrest 

What are the chief causes of 
Unrest? If you know yourself, you 
will answer Pride, Selfishness, Am- 
bition. As you look back upon the 
past years of your life, is it not true 
that its unhappiness has chiefly come 
from the succession of personal morti- 
fications and almost trivial disappoint- 
ments which the intercourse of life 
has brought you? 

Pax Vobiscwn. 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 295 

TTbe Xttnseem 

The true greatness of Law lies in 
its vision of the Unseen. Law in the 
visible is the invisible in the visible. 

Natural Lazv ; " Introduction." 

TEbe TUnseen ^Universe, 

IT is not necessary to reproduce 
here in detail the argument which 
has been stated recently with so 
much force in the Unseen U?tiverse. 
The conclusion of that work remains 
still unassailed, that the visible uni- 
verse has been developed from the 
unseen. Apart from the general 
proof from the Law of Continuity, 
the more special grounds of such 



296 MY POINT OF VIKW. 

a conclusion are, first, the fact insisted 
upon by Herschel and Clerk-Maxwell, 
that the atoms of which the visible 
universe is built up bear distinct 
marks of being manufactured articles; 
and, secondly, the origin in time of 
the visible universe is implied from 
known facts with regard to the dissi- 
pation of energy. With the gradual 
aggregation of mass the energy of 
the universe has been slowly disap- 
pearing, and this loss of energy must 
go on until none remains. There is, 
therefore, a point in time when the 
energy of the universe must come to 
an end; and that which has its end 
in time cannot be infinite— it must 
also have had a beginning in time. 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 297 

Hence the unseen existed before the 
seen. 

Natural Law : " Introduction." 



TUnselfisbness* 

I heard this definition the other 
day of a Christian man by a cynic : 
U A Christian man is a man whose 
great aim in life is a selfish desire to 
save his own soul, who, in order to 
do that, goes regularly to church, and 
whose supreme hope is to get to 
heaven when he dies." This re- 
minds one of Professor Huxley's ex- 
amination paper in which the ques- 
tion was put — " What is a lobster?" 
One student replied that a lobster 
was a red fish which moves backward. 



298 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

The examiner noted that this was a 
very good answer but for three things: 
In the first place, a lobster was not a 
fish; second, it was not red; and third, 
it did not move backward. If there is 
anything that a Christian is not, it is 
one who has a selfish desire to save 
his own soul. The one thing which 
Christianity tries to extirpate from 
a man's nature is selfishness, even 
though it be the losing of his own 
soul. 

What is a Christian t 

Christianity, as we understand it 
from Christ, appeals to the generous 
side of a young man's nature, and not 
to the selfish side. In the new ver- 
sion of the New Testament the word 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 299 

"soul" is always translated in this 
connection by the word 4 ( life. ! ! That 
marks a revolution in popular theol- 
ogy, and it will make a revolution in 
every Young Man's Christian Associ- 
ation in the country where it comes 
to be seen that a man's Christianity 
does not consist in merely saving his 
own soul, but in sanctifying and puri- 
fying the lives of his fellow-men. 

What is a Christian ? 

ftbe Vine. 

The Vine was the Eastern symbol 
of Joy. It was its fruit that made 
glad the heart of man. Yet, however 
innocent that gladness — for the ex- 
pressed juice of the grape was the 



300 MY POINT OF VIEW. 



common drink at every peasant's 
board — the gladness was only a gross 
and passing thing. This was not 
true happiness, and the vine of the 
Palestine vineyards was not the true 
vine. Christ was ( ' the true Vine. ' } 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 



tDitalttg, 

Vitality has much in common 
with such forces as magnetism and 
electricity, but there is on e, inviolable 
distinction between them — that L,ife 
is permanently fixed and rooted in the 
organism. The doctrines of conser- 
vation and transformation of energy, 
that is to say, do not hold for Vitality. 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 3OI 

The electrician can demagnetize a bar 
of iron — that is, he can transfer its 
energy of magnetism into something 
else — heat, or motion, or light — and 
then re-form these back into magnet- 
ism. For magnetism has no root, no 
individuality, no fixed indwelling. 
But the biologist cannot devitalize a 
plant or an animal and revivify it 
again. 

Natural Law ; " Conformity to Type." 

IDocabularies, 

Being dependent for our vocab- 
ulary on images, if an altogether new 
and foreign set of Laws existed in the 
Spiritual World, they could never 
take shape as definite ideas from mere 



302 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

want of words. The hypothetical 
new Laws which may remain to be 
discovered in the domain of Natural 
or Mental Science may afford some 
index of these hypothetical higher 
Laws, but this would of course mean 
that the latter were no longer foreign 
but in analogy, or, likelier still, iden- 
tical. If, on the other hand, the Nat- 
ural Laws of the future have nothing 
to say of these higher Laws, what can 
be said of them? Where is the lan- 
guage to come from in which to frame 
them? If their disclosures could be 
of any practical use to us, we may be 
sure the clue to them, the revelation 
of them, in some way would have 
been put into Nature. If, on the con- 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 303 

trary, they are not to be of immediate 
use to man, it is better they should 
not embarrass him. After all, then, 
our knowledge of higher Law must be 
limited by our knowledge of the lower. 

Natural Law : "Introduction." 

Voices. 

There is the voice of God and the 
voice of Nature. I cannot be wrong 
if I listen to them. Sometimes, when 
uncertain of a voice from its very 
loudness, we catch the missing syl- 
lable in the echo. In God and Nature 
we have Voice and Echo. When I 
hear both, I am assured. My sense 
of hearing does not betray me twice. 
I recognize the Voice in the Echo ; 



304 MY POINT OF VIKW. 

the Echo makes me certain of the 
Voice ; I listen and I know. 

Natural Law : " Eternal Life." 

Wbole or f>alt 

Thk failure to regard the exclusive 
claims of Christ as more than acci- 
dental, rhetorical, or ideal; the fail- 
ure to discern the essential difference 
between his Kingdom and all other 
systems based on the Hues of natural 
religion, and therefore merely Organic; 
in a word, the general neglect of the 
claims of Christ as the Founder of 
a new and higher Kingdom, — these 
have taken the very heart from the 
religion of Christ, and left its evangel 
without power x to impress or bless the 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 305 

world. Until even religious men see 
the uniqueness of Christ's society, 
until they acknowledge to the full 
extent its claim to be nothing less 
than a new Kingdom, they will con- 
tinue the hopeless attempt to live for 
two Kingdoms at once. And hence 
the value of a more explicit classifica- 
tion. For probably the most of the 
difficulties of trying to live the Chris- 
tian life arise from attempting to 
half-live it. 

Natural Law : " Classification." 

Mb?? 

Thk authority of Authority is 

waning. This is a plain fact. And 

it was inevitable. Authority — man's 
20 



306 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

Authority, that is — is for children. 
And there necessarily comes a time 
when they add to the question What 
shall I do ? or What shall I believe ? 
the adult's interrogation — Why? 
Now, this question is sacred, and 
must be answered. 

Natural Law : " Introduction." 

Willpower, 

Each day, each hour, demands 
a further motion and readjustment 
for the soul. A telescope in an 
observatory follows a star by clock- 
work, but the clockwork of the soul 
is called the Will. Hence, while the 
soul in passivity reflects the Image 
of the Lord, the Will in intense 



MY POINT OF VIKW. 307 

activity holds the mirror in position, 
lest the drifting motion of the world 
bear it beyond the line of vision. 
To " follow Christ" is largely to 
keep the sonl in such position as 
will allow for the motion of the earth. 
And this calculated counteracting of 
the movements of a world, this hold-, 
ing of the mirror exactly opposite to 
the Mirrored, this steadying of the 
faculties unerringly,, through cloud 
and earthquake, fire and sword, is 
the stupendous co-operating labor of 
the Will. 

The Changed Life. 

Wis&om* 

In the Spiritual World he will be 
wise who courts acquaintance with 



308 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

the most ordinary and transparent 
facts in Nature. 

Natural Law : "Environment." 

TKHorft, 

If God is spending work upon 
a Christian, let him be still and know 
that it is God. And if he wants 
work, he will find it there — in the 
being still. 

Natural Law : " Growth." 

Au, the work of the world is 
merely a taking advantage of ener- 
gies already there. 

Natural Law : " Growth." 

Worft anb ©rowtb. 

What is the relation between 
growth and work in a boy? Con- 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 309 

sciously, there is no relation at all. 
The boy never thinks of connecting 
his work with his growth. Work, 
in fact, is one thing, and growth 
another; and it is so in the spiritual 
life. If it be asked, therefore, Is the 
Christian wrong in these ceaseless 
and agonizing efforts after growth? 
the answer is, Yes, he is quite wrong, 
or at least he is quite mistaken. 
When a boy takes a meal or denies 
himself indigestible things, he does 
not say, "All this will minister to 
my growth;" or when he runs a race 
he does not say, " This will help the 
next cubit of my stature." It may 
or it may not be true that these 
things will help his stature, but if he 



310 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

thinks of this, his idea of growth is 
morbid. And this is the point we 
are dealing with. His anxiety here 
is altogether irrelevant and superflu- 
ous. Nature is far more bountiful 
than we think. When she gives us 
energy, she asks none of it back to 
expend on our own growth. She 
will attend to that. "Give your 
work, 1 ' she says, u and your anxiety 
to others; trust me to add the cubits 
to your stature." 

Natural Law : " Growth." 

a Morlb ot Cbance, 

THKRK used to be a children's book 
which bore the fascinating title of 
The Chance World. It described a 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 311 

world in which everything happened 
by chance. The sun might rise, or it 
might not ; or it might appear at any 
hour, or the moon might come up in- 
stead. When children were born they 
might have one head or a dozen heads, 
and those heads might not be on their 
shoulders— there might be no shoul- 
ders — but arranged about the limbs. If 
one jumped up in the air, it was impos- 
sible to predict whether he would ever 
come down again. That he came down 
yesterday was no guarantee that he 
would do it next time. For every day 
antecedent and consequent varied, and 
gravitation and everything else chang- 
ed from hour to hour. To-day a' 
child's body might be so light that it 



312 MY POINT OF VIKW. 

was impossible for it to descend from 
its chair to the floor ; but to-morrow, 
in attempting the experiment again, 
the impetus might drive it through a 
three-story house and dash it to pieces 
somewhere near the centre of the 
earth. In this chance world cause 
and effect were abolished. L,aw was 
annihilated. And the result to the 
inhabitants of such a world could 
only be that reason would be impossi- 
ble. It would be a lunatic world with 
a population of lunatics. 

Now, this is no more than a real 
picture of what the world would be 
without Law, or the universe without 
Continuity. 

Natural Law : " Preface." 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 313 

ThkrK is a great deal in the world 
that is delightful and beautiful, there 
is a great deal in it that is great and 
engrossing ; but it will not last. All 
that is in the world — the lust of the 
eye, the lust of the flesh, and the 
pride of life — are but for a little while. 
Love not the world therefore. Noth- 
ing that it contains is worth the life 
and consecration of an immortal soul. 
The immortal soul must give itself to 
something that is immortal. 

The Greatest Thing in the World. 

IT is u life in this world ' ' that is to 
be hated. For life in this world im- 
plies conformity to this world. It may 



314 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

not mean pursuing worldly pleasures 
or mixing with worldly sets, but 
a subtler thing than that — a silent 
deference to worldly opinion ; an al- 
most unconscious lowering of relig- 
ious tone to the level of the worldly- 
religious world around ; a subdued re- 
sistance to the soul's delicate prompt- 
ings to greater consecration, out of 
deference to " breadth" or fear of 
ridicule. These, and such things, 
are what Christ tells us we must hate. 
For these things are of the very es- 
sence of worldliness. 

Natural Law : " Eternal Life." 

XTbe Worlfc a SbaDow* 

The world is only a thing that is; 
it is not. It is a thing that teaches, 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 315 

yet not even a thing — a show that 
shows, a teaching shadow. However 
useless the demonstration otherwise, 
philosophy does well in proving that 
matter is a non-entity. We work 
with it as the mathematician with an 
x. The reality is alone the Spiritual. 
"It is very well for physicists to 
speak of 'matter/ but for men gen- 
erally to call this ' a material world ' 
is an absurdity. Should we call it an 
x- world it would mean as much — viz. , 
that we do not know what it is." 
When shall we learn the true mysti- 
cism of one who was yet far from be- 
ing a mystic — "We look not at the 
things which are seen, but at the 
things which are not seen ; for the 



316 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

things which are seen are temporal, 
but the things which are not seen are 
eternal " ? The visible is the ladder 
up to the invisible ; the temporal is 
but the scaffolding of the eternal. 
And when the last immaterial souls 
have climbed through this material 
to God, the scaffolding shall be taken 
down, and the earth dissolved with 
fervent heat — not because it was base, 
but because its work is done. 

Natural Law : " Introduction." 

Worl&iiness* 

No matter what may be the moral 
uprightness of man's life, the honor- 
ableness of 'his career, or the ortho- 
doxy of his creed, if he exercises the 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 317 

function of loving the world, that 
defines his world — he belongs to the 
Organic Kingdom. He cannot in 
that case belong to the higher King- 
dom. "If any man love the world, 
the love of the Father is not in him." 
After all, it is by the general bent of 
a man's life — by his heart-impulses 
and secret desires, his spontaneous 
actions and abiding motives — that his 
generation is declared. 

Natural Law : " Classification." 

Ube Worlds problem. 

Christ saw that men took life 
painfully. To some it was a weari- 
ness, to others a failure, to many 
a tragedy, to all a struggle and a 



318 MY POINT OF VIEW. 

pain. How to carry this burden of 
life had been the whole world's prob- 
lem. It is still the whole world's prob- 
lem. And here is Christ's solution: 
{ c Carry it as I do. Take life as I 
take it. L,ook at it from My point of 
view. Interpret it upon My princi- 
ples. Take My yoke and learn of 
Me, and you will find it easy. For 
My yoke is easy, works easily, sits 
right upon the shoulders, and there- 
fore My burden is light." 

Pax Vobiscum. 

It needs all kinds of people to 
make a world; it needs all kinds of 
people to make a church, and every 



MY POINT OF VIEW. 319 

type of young men a Christian Asso- 
ciation; and the greatest mistake of 
all is to have every man stamped in 
the same stamp, so that if you met 
him in a railway train one hundred 
miles off you would know him as 
a Y. M. C. A. man. I would like to 
find many who would not wear the 
badge so pronouncedly that every one 
should know them at a glance. 

.What Is a Christian ? 

l^ofte of Cbrist 

Did you ever stop to ask what a 
yoke is really for ? Is it to be a bur- 
den to the animal which wears it? 
It is just the opposite. It is to make 
its burden light. Attached to the 



320 MY POINT OF VIKW. 

oxen in any other way than by a 
yoke the plough would be intolerable. 
Worked by means of a yoke it is 
light. A yoke is not an instrument 
of torture: it is an instrument of 
mercy. It is not a malicious contriv- 
ance for making work hard: it is 
a gentle device to make hard labor 
light. It is not meant to give pain, 
but to save pain. And yet men speak 
of the yoke of Christ as if it were 
a slavery, and look upon those who 
wear it as objects of compassion. 

Pax Vobiscum* 



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